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Weather need not be boring

When I was a kid, I’d gripe incessantly about the weather.

It rained seemingly forever in my hometown of Portland, Ore. I’d whine to my parents. “I hate the raaiiin,” I’d say in the whiniest voice I could muster.

Dad’s response was usually the same: “Go talk to God.”

Gee, thanks Dad.

Over the years, I moved away from home. I went into the Army, traveling to Virginia, to Vietnam, then back to the Pacific Northwest to finish my two-year hitch. ‘Nam produced some interesting weather: buckets of rain, followed by stifling heat, then more buckets.

Years after that, my career took me to the Texas Gulf Coast. It rained a lot there, in heavy quantities all at once. Then the clouds would break, the sun would come out. The humidity was, shall we say, stifling.

Then we came to the Texas Panhandle.

Unlike the Gulf Coast, where the weather routinely changes day to day, the weather patterns here have fallen into the same kind of sameness that the rain did when I was a kid.

Then it occurred to me some years ago: It wasn’t the rain that bothered me in Portland, it was the monotony of it. A similar monotony has settled over the Panhandle in recent years. All that damn sunshine is making me whine, “I wish it would raaiiin.”

Fortunately, my wife hasn’t told me to talk to the Almighty, at least not yet.

Well, today the weather turned. It’s pouring rain as I write this. The TV weather folks say it’ll be raining for the next few days.

Bring it! Our farmers and ranchers need it. My neighbors and I need for our lawns and gardens. A brief downpour, followed by sunshine, followed by more rain … that would be heaven for us.

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Duncan to lead Tech … who knew?

This might be the least-surprising story to come out of West Texas since, oh, the revelation that the cotton can get mighty tall at times.

State Sen. Bob Duncan is the sole finalist to become Texas Tech University’s next chancellor.

Who’da thunk it?

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/05/19/robert-duncan-be-next-texas-tech-chancellor/

Duncan is going to replace Kent Hance as head of the Tech university system. He’ll have to wait 21 days before Texas Tech’s regents can make the formal announcement. Then Gov. Rick Perry will call for a special election to select someone who’ll replace one of the Legislature’s shining lights.

This is an excellent development for the Texas Tech University System.

The chancellor’s main job is to raise money for the university. Duncan’s standing in the Texas Senate — where he routinely is named among the best legislators in the state, according to Texas Monthly. He has an

Duncan is an outstanding choice. He is a Tech alumnus, earning his bachelor’s and law degrees from the Lubbock school. He built a successful law practice on the South Plain and has taken time off from that practice since the mid-1990s to legislate every other year from the Legislature.

Sen. Duncan will do very well to meet his new challenge.

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Partisan battle over vets' health care?

The most interesting thing President Obama said today in his remarks about the Veterans Administration health care scandal involved what he hopes will be the lack of partisan rancor in this discussion.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus didn’t hear that part of the president’s remarks … apparently.

“Why did President Obama wait to address this situation only to ask our veterans for more time and to offer nothing but words?” Priebus asked.

Nothing but words? What does the RNC chairman want Barack Obama to do? Fire everyone? Does he want the Justice Department to bring criminal charges without first knowing what the evidence is to charge someone?

For crying out loud, does he want the president to don some surgical scrubs and tend to veterans’ health needs himself?

Give me a break.

The VA scandal is huge. Veterans reportedly have died while waiting for health care that had been delayed well past what is acceptable. VA officials allegedly cooked up wait-time lists that were bogus to cover their backsides.

Let’s stipulate that this is unacceptable at every possible level imaginable.

Republicans are angry, as are Democrats. The president noted, though, that this is requires an American response that goes beyond partisan posturing. Priebus is trying to gain some kind of political advantage here.

The president vowed to turn over every stone to find out what has gone so horribly wrong with our veterans’ health care system. I am quite sure I watched an angry commander in chief offer some pointed remarks today.

Enough of the peanut-gallery remarks, Chairman Priebus.

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Get the truth at VA, Mr. President

It is fair to assume that President Obama is as angry as he says he is about the growing scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The mess created by what appears to be a deliberate cover-up of health care for veterans is a blight on his presidency, not to mention the reputation of the agency charged with caring for our veterans.

The president today vowed repeatedly to get to the bottom of the scandal and, while expressing support for Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, has left the door open for the retired four-star Army general to leave on his own — or be fired — if the evidence takes investigators to his office.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/president-obama-eric-shinseki-va-106938.html?hp=f1

I accept the president’s declaration of outrage as sincere. This is a horrible circumstance that, according to the president, isn’t anything new. It goes back “decades,” he said. Veterans are waiting too long to receive urgent medical care and that must end.

As a Vietnam War veteran myself — but one who enjoys excellent health (knock on wood) — I couldn’t agree more with that desire.

The issue blew wide open with reports of at least 40 veterans dying while in the care of the Phoenix, Ariz., veterans hospital; what’s more, we now know of bogus documentation that fabricated the vets’ wait time that in reality went far beyond the two-week maximum required by VA policy. Now we hear of extreme delays at VA medical centers in other states, including Texas.

President Obama said these delays won’t stand. We owe it to our veterans to get the top-notch care they deserve, he said, and he vowed not to rest until he finds out the whole truth about what has gone wrong, who is responsible and who to bring to account for this outrageous circumstance.

I’m with you, Mr. President, in your search for what’s gone so terribly wrong at the VA. You’d better know, though, that millions of sets of eyes will be watching you to ensure you keep your promise to follow the trail toward the truth — no matter where it leads.

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Texas politics always is bloody

I’ve noted before how Texas politics is a contact sport.

The source of that description came to me from the late great Democratic U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen. It’s more than mere contact, however. At times it becomes a blood sport.

Take the Republican runoff race for Texas lieutenant governor or the GOP runoff contest for state attorney general. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and state Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston are going at each other hammer and tong. It well might be that the Dan Branch-Ken Paxton contest for AG is even nastier, with Paxton running TV ads accusing Branch of being a — gulp! — “liberal Republican” who voted for third-trimester abortions and has backed the dreaded Obamacare.

This kind of campaigning isn’t new to Texas.

The Texas Tribune looked back at the 1990 Democratic race for governor as its prime example of how low it can go.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/05/20/analysis-politics-as-limbo–how-low-can-it-go/

Attorney General Jim Mattox squared off against State Treasurer Ann Richards. They finished at the top of the primary heap that year and faced each other in a runoff for the party nomination.

Mattox actually accused Richards of using illegal drugs. Richards, a recovering alcoholic, had been clean and sober for many years. That didn’t matter to the bulldog Mattox, who made the accusation during a live TV debate with Richards, according to the Tribune.

Richards would win the runoff and would go on to beat Republican oilman Clayton Williams in the fall after Williams (a) made that terrible gaffe about rape and how women should “just relax and enjoy it” and (b) refused to shake Richards’s hand at an event they attended jointly, instead calling her a “liar” within hearing distance of an open microphone.

Yes, we should lament the nastiness of these current campaigns. Let’s not get too overwrought about them, however. They’re hardly new creations of this new age.

This nastiness is part of what makes Texas politics so, um, invigorating.

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President preaches success

Barack Obama was preaching to the choir the other day.

He declared during a Democratic Party fundraiser that Americans “are better off now than when I came into office.”

Do you think?

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/fundraising/206591-obama-americans-better-off-under-his-presidency

That the president would say such a thing is no surprise. Incumbents make these proclamations when they’re out raising money for their party in an election year.

But … wait for it.

The other side is going to level the equally non-surprising broadsides at the president for dredging up that bad old recession he inherited when he took office on Jan. 20, 2009.

You remember that time, right? The job market was hemorrhaging jobs by 700,000 — give or take — a month. Unemployment was heading toward a peak of around 10 percent. Banks were failing. Auto dealerships were tanking. Oh, and we were fighting two wars and were losing American lives on Iraq and Afghanistan battlefields daily.

Have we returned to some Nirvana after that terrible experience? No. We’re still on the road back.

Joblessness is down. The private sector is adding jobs instead of losing them. The auto industry has returned to fighting trim. Bank failures have ceased. The budget deficit — which accelerated as the government sought to jump-start the economy — is receding. Congress has enacted a health care overhaul that is working.

I believe the president has reason to crow about the state of things in the country, despite the continuing rhetoric from the opposition that is scouring the landscape for anything on which to stain Barack Obama’s record.

Hey, that’s politics. Republicans want to control the Senate as well as the House of Reps; Democrats want to keep control of the Senate. Both sides seek to exploit advantage where they find it.

Not quite two years after a bruising re-election campaign in which Republicans sought to focus on the economy, the president now can turn to that very issue as a signal that we’re on the right track.

To paraphrase GOP presidential nominee Ronald Reagan’s famous query during the 1980 campaign: Are we better off now than we were six years ago?

I’d have to say “yes.”

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Top cop calls it quits in N.H. town

Bye, bye, Police Commissioner Robert Copeland.

Your moment of infamy has taken you out of office — as it should.

http://news.msn.com/us/police-commissioner-resigns-in-wake-of-obama-slur?ocid=ansnews11

Copeland is the now-former police commissioner of Wolfeboro, N.H., who had the indecency the other to be heard referring to the president of the United States using the n-word. Copeland at first refused to apologize for the highly disgusting word to describe President Obama.

Then he got a bellyful of complaints from residents of the town he had been elected and re-elected to protect. They didn’t like the extreme disrespect he exhibited toward the president. They told him so in no-uncertain terms.

So, he quit.

Fine. The commissioner disgraced himself and, more importantly, the town he represented.

Why is this important? Well, for my money it’s important because this kind of slur has no place coming from any public official at any level of government. Indeed, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the 2012 Republican presidential nominee who owns a home in Wolfeboro, said it correctly when he demanded Copeland’s resignation. Romney said Copeland’s “vile epithet used and confirmed by the commissioner has no place in our community.”

It has no place anywhere in a civilized society.

Is the ex-commissioner entitled to speak his mind? Sure he is. But when he disgraces the public office he holds and shames the public trust, then he should be called to account.

That’s what happened in a small New Hampshire town.

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Ready for a GOP takeover?

Many of my friends, if not most of them, think I live, breathe and eat politics 24/7.

They may be right. One of them posed the question to me this afternoon: “Are you ready for a Republican takeover of the Senate?”

Yes. I am.

Do I predict it will happen when the midterm elections are concluded this November? Not necessarily, but it’s looking like a distinct possibility.

A few Democratic Senate incumbents might be in trouble. What’s more likely, though, is that Republicans will pick up seats that had been held by Democrats in GOP-leaning states. South Dakota is likely to from Democrat to Republican; so might West Virginia.

Meanwhile, Louisiana’s Democratic incumbent could lose to a GOP challenger. Arkansas was thought to be vulnerable to a GOP switch, but the Democratic incumbent there is making a comeback.

I’m not sure a GOP takeover of the Senate will be a bad thing. The Rs already control the House and pretty much have made a hash out of the governing process by its obstructing so many constructive initiatives.

If the GOP grabs the Senate, we’re looking at the possibility of Capitol Hill actually trying to govern. Recall the 1995 Congress, which turned from fully Democratic control to fully Republican. A Democrat, Bill Clinton, occupied the White House. The speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, turned almost immediately from fire-breathing zealot to someone who actually could deal with the president. He also had the Senate at his back.

Will history repeat itself? The current speaker, John Boehner, seems capable of striking deals — even though he has to say some mean things about the White House to placate the tea party wing of his party. If the Senate flips to GOP control, then we’ll see if the Republican-controlled Capitol Hill can actually produce legislation the president will sign.

Warning No. 1: If you seize control of Capitol Hill, you rascally Republicans, don’t try to toss the Affordable Care Act overboard. The president does have veto authority and you’ll need far more than a simple majority to override a presidential veto. The Supreme Court has upheld the law, which now is working.

Having said all this, I think it is simply wise to see what the voters decide in November.

The current crop of Republicans has shown quite a talent for overplaying its hand — e.g., the on-going ACA repeal circus, not to mention the IRS and Benghazi nonsense.

Although I am prepared for a GOP takeover, I am far from ready to concede it is a done deal.

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Some thoughts on Abramson

What am I missing here about Jill Abramson’s firing as executive editor of the New York Times?

I keep coming back to the threshold question: Was she doing the job or wasn’t she?

The NYT’s brain trust said she wasn’t, so they let her go.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/jill-abramson-wake-forest-graduation-nytimes-new-york-times-firing-106824.html?hp=t1

I saw commentators over the weekend suggest that Abramson was being held to a different standard because she’s a woman. Really? I’ve always adhered to the policy that if you’re doing what your bosses want, then you’re in the clear. If not, then you get whacked. Pure and simple. I don’t understand the double standard argument. Someone will have to help me out.

One more quick point.

Salary reportedly has become an issue of public discussion. I have no idea what Abramson earned as executive editor, or whether it equaled what her immediate predecessor, Bill Keller, earned.

Back when I was working full time as a journalist, I always was instructed that my salary was privileged information, to be known only by myself, my immediate supervisors and the person in charge of cutting the checks every pay period. I followed that policy to the letter during my more than three decades in daily journalism. I never told anyone my salary, nor did I ever ask anyone what they earned.

There were times over the years when I more or less put two-and-two together to presume what someone was earning, but I never — not a single time — discussed it openly.

Abramson got canned. As the sanitized version of the saying goes: Stuff happens.

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Button it up, Mr. VP

Dick Cheney continues to astound me.

The former vice president of the United States just won’t go away quietly. He keeps yammering and blathering about what a horrible job Barack Obama has done as president. He proclaims the president has demonstrated “weakness” in the face of foreign threats. He talks about the “danger” posed by the Obama foreign policy doctrine.

What utter crap!

Cheney the chicken hawk — who got all those draft deferments during the Vietnam War — keeps harping on the need for “military response” to any overseas crisis. Give me a bleeping break.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/05/18/cheney_obama_has_demonstrated_repeatedly_that_he_can_be_pushed_around.html

Cheney was at it again over the weekend, Monday-morning-quarterbacking recent moves by the Obama administration.

My hope would be that one day Cheney would follow the lead of the man in whose presidency he served, George W. Bush, and just clam up and let the one president we have do his job. President Bush, as has his father, George H.W. Bush, have been the models of post-presidential decorum as it regards the men who succeeded them in office.

In fairness, I cannot let slip a slap at President Clinton, who’s spouted his share of criticism at George W. Bush, who succeeded in him in the White House.

Presidents and vice presidents should assume a role of “elder statesmen,” which by definition keeps them elevated from the partisan political posturing that occupies current officeholders.

They’ve all had their time in the arena. They’ve all made mistakes. Yes, that means Vice President Cheney has made them, too — although he is so very loath to admit to the doozies that occurred on his watch.

Cheney’s post-vice presidential arrogance just is too much for me to take.

Put a sock in it, Mr. Vice President.

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