national news, political news

No outcry over congressional break

It’s certain that many Americans remember the outcry when President Obama took time off this summer to relax with his family.

“How dare he leave town with all this important work to do?” came the outcry from conservatives. He had crises to manage, they said.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/nice-work-if-you-can-get-it-0

OK, now the other side has taken a powder — to campaign for re-election.

The GOP-run House of Representatives has left town, leaving a ton of important work still undone. It doesn’t matter to them that they are now the slackers in this equation.

Yes, the House did stick around long enough to vote on a Syrian-training-and-arming resolution, as did the Senate. Obama praised them for their votes and the bipartisan support his request receives in both congressional chambers.

Then Congress said, “You’re welcome, Mr. President. We’re outta here.”

Take a look at the graphic attached to this post and you’ll see why Congress has earned its moniker as the latest edition of the “Do Nothing Congress.” They’ve done, well, virtually nothing. They’ve passed little legislation.

Now the legislative branch has split. They’re running for re-election. How will the incumbents frame their “accomplishments” to voters?

national news, political news

Kansas race now gets seriously interesting

Who would have thought that a campaign for a U.S. Senate race in little ol’ Kansas would have such profound national implications?

It appears that something like that is shaping up.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/218262-kansas-supreme-court-ruling-grants-democrats-request-to-be

The Kansas Supreme Court has removed the name of a Democrat from the ballot after he dropped out of the race unexpectedly more than a week ago. Chad Taylor pulled out of the race because (a) he didn’t have a prayer of beating incumbent Republican Pat Roberts and (b) the independent candidate, Greg Orman, is surging and is now leading Roberts in most polls.

What does this mean?

It might mean that Republicans could fall short of winning control of the Senate, which is the dream of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who wants to become majority leader in January.

Roberts took a serious beating in the GOP primary when questions arose about his residency and whether he actually lived in Kansas any longer. He said he does and he beat back the challenge.

Orman, though, has cut seriously into Roberts’s standing among voters. He’s casting the incumbent as out of touch and all the usual anti-incumbent stuff one hears. The difference, however, is that it’s sticking to Roberts.

Taylor was running third in the polls. The word now is that he dropped out merely to try denying Roberts’s re-election to the Senate. He’s what one would call a “team player,” meaning he took one for the team if it helps the non-Republican candidate win the contest. Republicans wanted to keep his name on the ballot, but the state’s high court dismissed the GOP appeal.

Most polling around the country shows the race for Senate control to be tight. A RealClearPolitics average of polls suggests Republicans would fall one seat short if the election were held today. If Roberts loses in reliably Republican Kansas, then the odds of a GOP takeover would appear doomed.

Yes, there’s a certain twinge of chicanery involved here. It’s legal, just as it was legal for African-American Democrats to vote for Republican Sen. Thad Cochran in Mississippi to deny tea party GOP challenger Chris McDaniel an upset.

As the saying goes — and I’m not even sure what it means: Politics ain’t bean bag.

local news, State news

Blogging is a blast … most of the time

Readers of this blog know — I hope — that I take great joy in expressing opinions on this or that subject.

I consider it a form of recreation, perhaps even therapy. I like sharing it on various social media. I post the blog entries to my Twitter feed, which goes automatically to my Facebook feed. They also post automatically to LinkedIn and Tumblr.

Sometimes, though, the Facebook feed results in some, shall we say, unfortunate reactions among a few of the hundreds of friends and “friends” who read this stuff on that social medium.

Some of my friends/”friends” react to the blog post. Their reaction draws a critical response from someone else on the feed. Then the initial responder respond to the response. Back and forth it goes. Then others enter the fray. Then it becomes a game of insults, a put-down contest, if you please.

Some of it is good-natured. Some of it isn’t. Then it gets out of hand.

I commented earlier today on Texas executing a young woman for the murder of a little boy. I stated my opposition capital punishment. Then the fusillade started among a few folks who had read the blog.

It got a bit crazy.

Sometimes I’m a bit slow on the uptake and sometimes I don’t recognize good humor when it’s hidden behind insults. Perhaps my friends — and these individuals are people I know well — were just kidding among themselves. They really didn’t mean to say all those nasty things to each other, or at least outsiders looking in — such as yours truly — shouldn’t interpret them as mean-spiritedness.

Forgive me, guys. I don’t get it.

I’ll keep spewing this stuff. Others can comment. They’re free to insult each other as long as they don’t use the magic word, which in baseball rhubarb parlance is “you.” By that I don’t want them saying, “You bleeping so-and-so!”

Let’s keep it clean.

International news, national news, State news

Ho, hum; Texas executes a woman

How times have changed since the late 1990s.

Texas has just executed a female inmate, Lisa Coleman, 38, in the death of a 9-year-old boy she starved to death.

I didn’t even know she was scheduled to die, only learning of her death after the fact.

http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/texas-executes-woman-for-starvation-of-boy-9-1

Yep, just another day at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice death chamber.

I couldn’t help but think of the international uproar that arose when Texas put down Karla Faye Tucker back in 1998. Do you remember when then-Gov. George W. Bush mocked Tucker just days before she died when he said, using a pitiful voice, that Tucker likely said, “Pleease don’t kill me.” Oh, that Dubya, .. what a card.

A South Africa TV station called to interview little ol’ me — yours truly — about Tucker’s impending death. They must have run out of more suitable subjects to interview, but there I was — on the air, live, with some reporter in Cape Town, South Africa, offering my own perspective on what it meant to execute a woman.

I’ve kept my feelings about capital punishment pretty much quiet. Only my family and closest friends had known how I feel about it. I more or less had to keep quiet about it, given that I worked for newspapers that supported the use of the death penalty as punishment for capital crimes. Now that I can speak for myself, I have declared my opposition to capital punishment.

It doesn’t upset any more when we execute women. I detest the punishment for men and women equally.

What’s more detestable, though, is that the death of a young woman on a TDCJ execution chamber gurney came and went and so few of us seemed to care.

local news, national news, political news

Will lame-duck status signal end to incessant griping?

Barack Obama becomes a lame-duck president officially on Nov. 5, the day after the midterm elections.

He in fact became such the moment he won re-election in November 2012, given that the Constitution prohibits him from running for a third term.

That hasn’t stemmed the constant carping about his presidency and his alleged “failures” as the nation’s chief executives.

I have a friend who keeps yammering about the president being an “empty coat.” Other conservatives keep blathering about how his economic policies have “failed the country,” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Still others right-wingers blame the president for the myriad international crises that that keep flaring up all around the world, as if the United States has the power to put them all down — all at once.

I’m wondering when the constant griping will start to subside. My best guess is that the midterm elections might provide some relief for those of us out here who actually support the president, who voted for his re-election and who believe he’s done a good job given the horrible circumstances he inherited when he took office.

I live smack in the middle of Anti-Obama Country. The Texas Panhandle voted 80 percent against him in two presidential elections. So I get that he doesn’t have much cache in this part of the nation.

Here’s what I don’t get: I don’t get why the Obama haters — and they truly hate the man, perhaps for reasons they dare not acknowledge publicly — can’t start looking ahead to the next election and start scouring the landscape for a suitable alternative.

Are they out there? Is there a Republican on the horizon who can do better at reducing the budget deficit, reducing the jobless rate, helping private business hire more Americans, help provide health insurance for millions of Americans who didn’t have it, protect us against terrorist attacks, round up illegal immigrants and end two costly wars?

Barack Obama’s lame-duck status ought to be good news for his enemies.

Come on, folks. Cheer up. The nation is still standing. And we’re still the strongest nation on the planet.

national news, Sports news

Another one joins a sad, sorry list of thugs

You can add Greg Hardy to the National Football League’s list of abusive scoundrels … allegedly.

He plays for the Carolina Panthers and has been added to something called the “commissioner’s exempt” list, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

I guess it means the NFL commissioner has deemed him unfit to play football while he’s being investigated for criminal activity.

Hardy, too, has been charged with domestic violence, along with Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson (whose actual allegation involves abuse of his 4-year-old son).

Will there be more to come? I’m betting yes.

Houston, we have a problem.

The NFL well might be a deep source of embarrassment, shame and recrimination.

Large, physically fit athletes are being charged with some despicable crimes.

As bad as it seems to look now for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, I’ll give him credit at least for admitting openly that he blew it initially when he suspended former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice for just two games after learning he had punched his fiancée in the face, knocking her out cold in that casino elevator. Rice is now suspended indefinitely and has been fired by the Ravens.

I’m beginning to think we’re seeing just the beginning of a long and miserable tale of woe in the National Football League.

Uncategorized

Alzheimer's disease: Enemy No. 1

Several hundred Amarillo residents are going for a walk Saturday.

It’s an annual event here, as it is in communities all across the country. They’ll walk to call attention to Alzheimer’s disease. I won’t be among them that day, as I’ll be working.

However, my heart is with them. All of them. I want them to raise money and to keep raising money to fight a killer disease with which my family and I have intimate knowledge.

***

Thirty years ago this week, my dear mother died quietly in her sleep. Her death certificate lists pneumonia as the cause of her death.

Alzheimer’s disease was the real culprit.

Mom was 61. She’d been in failing health for several years. A doctor diagnosed her officially with Alzheimer’s disease only four years earlier but in reality she’d been exhibiting symptoms for years prior to that diagnosis.

Her behavior was changing. She was losing her cognitive skill. She lost them one at a time. The ability to sign her own name. The ability to drive a car. She couldn’t cook meals. Eventually she couldn’t bathe herself. She couldn’t dress herself. Near the end she couldn’t speak and was reduced to making strange murmuring noises.

Those who have witnessed their loved ones vanish in this manner before their eyes understand this fundamental truth about Alzheimer’s disease: It afflicts the caregiver far more than the patient. Mom was unaware of her surroundings, of those who loved her. She didn’t know when she lapsed in and out of lucidity. But we knew it. It broke our hearts.

Alzheimer’s disease hasn’t captured the public’s imagination the way, say, AIDS or various forms of cancer have gobbled up so much of the world’s attention. Why? I guess it’s because its victims generally are older and that its not the result of unhealthy behavior. It strikes people without warning or cause.

It struck Mom that way, just as it strikes those who’ve been diagnosed with this merciless, cruel disease.

Our nation is aging. That means more Americans will suffer from this terrible affliction.

My wish — as always — is that modern medicine can find a cure, a vaccine to eradicate Alzheimer’s disease.

The Saturday walk at Sam Houston Park will raise money toward that end.

My prayer today is that the money raised will put researchers over the top in their hunt for a cure that ends the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease.

Uncategorized

Sponsors will get NFL's attention

Leave it to the sponsors to get through to the dim bulbs who run professional football teams, some of which are populated by criminals.

They are the entities that will get to the owners, the general managers, the sports agents and perhaps even to the athletes.

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson is now suspended indefinitely while Texas courts seek to resolve the indictment charging him with child abuse in the whipping of his 4-year-old son. What made the Vikings switch so dramatically? The Radisson hotel chain pulled its sponsorship.

Former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice is under indefinite suspension for knocking his then-fiancée unconscious in a gambling casino elevator. Rice would marry the woman he knocked out cold and now the NFL Players Association is appealing his suspension.

What is driving all of this? The corporate sponsors who give big money to the NFL, to its teams and who pay players big money to endorse their products.

They’re going to yank those endorsements and those sponsorships.

That’s when the owners will get the message. Indeed, many of them are getting it already.

There likely will be more cases of domestic violence reported. Perhaps it’s a function of the violent sport. Hey, it might even be a consequence of the concussions these athletes are suffering.

Whatever the cause, domestic violence — and let’s include child abuse in that broad category of grotesque misbehavior — cannot be allowed to stand.

If the owners and team officials — along with the league — cannot muster up the guts to the right thing by themselves, then the sponsors will make the call for them.

International news, national news, political news

Why so many speeches at these hearings?

This is not exactly a scoop, but I thought I’d ask it anyway: Why do members of Congress have to make speeches when they’re assembled to seek answers to questions from key government officials?

http://www.politico.com/livestream/

It’s happening as I write this brief blog post.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is quizzing Secretary of State John Kerry about the U.S. plan to defeat and destroy the Islamic State. But without fail, from senators on both sides — Democrats and Republicans — are embarking on long-winded soliloquies before getting to whatever question they want answered from the nation’s top diplomat.

Kerry, of course, knows the score. He served in the Senate for nearly three decades and engaged in some tiresome speechmaking while grilling witnesses before the very committee he once chaired.

Many of out here in the Heartland know what gives, too. Politicians by definition usually are in love with the sound of their own voices. So they want to hear themselves being heard, yes?

I’m reminded of the time during Senate confirmation hearings to decide whether Samuel Alito should join the U.S. Supreme Court. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee gave each senator 30 minutes to “ask questions” of the nominee. Then it came to Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del. CNN put a clock on Biden, who then pontificated for more than 28 minutes.

Biden eventually asked the question and Alito had less than two minutes to respond. Time ran out and the chairman called on the next senator.

I’d much rather hear what a witness has to say hear for the umpteenth time what a senator of House member thinks about this or that issue.

International news, national news, political news

Benghazi hearings actually can be constructive

2 Comments

Here we go.

A congressional select committee of House members has convened a series of hearings on Benghazi, which has become shorthand for “How do we derail Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations?”

The committee chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., is going to replow some ground that’s been tossed, turned and examined to the hilt on what happened on Sept. 11, 2012 when terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

The event occurred when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. It’s been a talking point ever since among right-wing critics of the Obama administration — and that includes conservative mainstream media.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/218014-benghazi-chairman-opens-first-hearing-says-its-not-time-to-move-on

What will the committee learn that it doesn’t already know about what happened? Probably not a damn thing.

Here, though, is where the hearings can prove constructive.

They can ascertain whether we’ve done enough to improve embassy and consulate security in the two years since that horrible attack.

I hope that’s the goal. I hope that we can determine if we’ve learned from the mistakes committed during that horrible fire fight.

Gowdy opened the hearings with this statement: “We do not suffer from a lack of recommendations. We do not suffer from a lack of boards, commissions and blue ribbon panels. We suffer from a lack of implementing and enacting those recommendations. That must end.”

OK. Then find out what needs to be implemented, make a recommendation, file a report and put it on the record.

The longer this matter remains a political talking point, the more it will take on the appearance of what some of us believe already: a witch hunt.

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