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Re-election hill steepens some for incumbents

The Gallup Poll organization reports something that might give congressional incumbents plenty of pause as they campaign for re-election.

Listen up, Rep. Mac Thornberry.

It is that 46 percent of Americans — a record low — would vote to re-elect their member of Congress in 2014.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/01/24/poll_record_low_would_re-elect_representative_121344.html

That’s down from 59 percent in 2012, according to RealClearPolitics.com.

Get this as well: It’s split evenly among Democrats and Republicans, at 18 percent for members of each party.

Why should this concern incumbents? Republicans in particular have shown this penchant for — as the late Texas state Sen. Teel Bivins used to say — “eating their young.” Tea party insurgents keep popping up to challenge “establishment Republican” incumbents. It’s happening in the 13th Congressional District — which Thornberry represents — with two challengers trying to outflank the incumbent on the right. The same is true in Kentucky, where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is being challenged by the tea party, as is Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

It’s no secret that this appears to be the season of discontent with Congress. Polls show congressional approval in the low teens, which actually is a slight improvement from late in 2013, when it slid into the single digits.

How will this end up? It could end well for incumbents, but only perhaps when Congress can re-learn the art of legislating, which involves some compromise between the parties.

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Time to harvest abundant sunlight in West Texas

Let the sun shine, which it does continually in West Texas.

A huge solar plant is now being planned for an area west of Fort Stockton in Pecos County. It will be a 22-megawatt operation, one of the largest of its kind in Texas — and it could signal a new twist in the state’s ability to harvest alternative forms of energy.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/01/22/solar-plant-planned-west-texas/

The sun does shine a lot out here in the West Texas prairie. Amarillo gets more than 300 days of sunshine, some of it intense — such as it is today, even though it’s colder than a well-digger’s backside.

Why not harvest that sunlight for energy, kind of like what’s happening with wind, another energy commodity that is in infinite supply out here?

Oh, I forgot. West Texas also is home to a lot of oil and natural gas operations. Do you think those folks have something to say about how we configure the energy grid? I’m guessing, well, yes, in a big way.

Back to the Pecos County plan.

The Texas Tribune reports: “This is an important step forward in our efforts to establish West Texas as a center for renewable energy,” Pecos County Judge Joe Shuster said in a statement. “We are not resting on our legacy of leadership in oil and gas. We welcome solar as the next new component in our portfolio of energy resources.”

The Barilla plant won’t be the biggest solar plant in Texas. Operations near San Antonio and Austin will generate more megawatts of energy than the Pecos County operation. Still, it does signal an opportunity to invest in yet another seemingly limitless energy resource that can heat homes in the winter, cool them in the summer — and do all of that without burning up the state’s finite amount of fossil fuel resources.

Let the sun shine, indeed.

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Let’s be self-aware, Dr. Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer was a psychiatrist before he became a political pundit.

As such, he surely had some training in medical school about self-awareness, and how to counsel patients who perhaps lack that important emotional quality.

I was struck, therefore, by Dr. Krauthammer’s own lack of self-awareness as he lambasted President Obama for what he called the president’s “repulsive” lack of respect for those on the other side of any given political debate.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/01/23/krauthammer_obamas_self-righteousness_and_refusal_to_give_respect_to_the_other_side_is_repulsive.html

Krauthammer told Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly that the president thinks he’s always right and that his foes are always wrong and that he shows his arrogance regularly when he puts down his adversaries for their so-called “lack of patriotism.”

Isn’t the good doctor listening to the other side? Has he not heard Republicans step way beyond the bounds of decency when they criticize things such as, say, the Affordable Care Act. For that matter, he ought to listen to himself when he levels such criticism at Barack Obama or those allied with the president. All that talk about arrogance and self-assuredness can be directed right back at the individual who makes such a claim in the first place.

I’ve lost count of the number of ACA foes who have proclaimed it to be the “worst legislation” in U.S. history, or those who contend it is the moral equivalent of a terrorist attack on the U.S. health care system. Gosh, I would rate any of the many laws enacted that sanctioned slavery to be quite a bit worse than the ACA.

Does the doctor forget about all the times former Republican U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich proclaimed Democrats to be the “enemy of ‘normal Americans'”? How about the ridiculous assertions that many tea party Republicans have made regarding Obama’s citizenship, allegiance to the country or whether he’s “American” enough to hold the office to which he’s been elected twice?

The other side — Dr. Krauthammer’s side — has plenty of examples of precisely the kind of repulsiveness he lays at Barack Obama’s feet.

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Glenn Beck sorry? Now he owns up to it

Glenn Beck told the Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly that he is sorry for all the division and partisan rancor he has caused since the start of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Now he says he’s sorry? Now?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/01/22/glenn-beck-admits-divisive-role.html

It’s a bit late in the game for Beck, the talk-show radio host and one-time TV superstar on Fox to say he’s sorry for all the divisiveness he has contributed to the country.

Fox signed him on in 2009 and seemed to give him a single task: Trash the news president often and with extreme prejudice. Beck did all of that with apparent glee.

He made things up. He embellished his version of what he said was wrong with the country. He stoked the fire of anger from those on the right and the far right over the nation electing its first African-American president. You’ll recall that Beck once said famously — or infamously — on the Fox channel that the president of the United States hated white people.

Now he’s sorry for saying all those angry things about the president.

It reminds me of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara writing in his memoir, published in early 1996, that he believed the United States shouldn’t have fought the Vietnam War, that we were engaged in a futile endeavor. He was about 30 years late in offering that mea culpa, after more than 58,000 Americans were killed in that tragic war.

I recall the reaction then was that McNamara, too, was a bit late.

It pains me to say it, Glenn, but you can’t unhonk the horn.

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NFL Pro Bowl a joke? Well … duh!

When a professional football coaching icon tells you your all-star game is no longer worth playing, let alone watching, perhaps you ought to pay careful attention.

John Madden, the Hall of Famer who coached the Oakland Raiders into their glory years, says the NFL Pro Bowl has become a mockery. He hates it. He detests the new draft system that allows Jerry Rice and Deion Sanders to pick the teams.

http://msn.foxsports.com/buzzer/story/john-madden-rips-the-pro-bowl-012214

He’s right.

While he’s at it, he ought to level a barrage at the National Basketball Association for its all-star dunk contest and the National Hockey League for its all-star games that produce 15-12 scores.

The only all-star game worth a damn in my view is the Major League Baseball game in which the winning league — National or American — wins home-field advantage for the World Series.

The NBA all-star game features zero defense. Same for the NHL, where defensemen don’t hit anyone.

Back to the NFL. Football is a collision sport. How in players in good conscience actually seek to hit each other the way they would during the regular season? They risk serious injury. So they go through the motions and produce a game that features tepid blocking and tackling and lots of touchdowns.

These all-star games bore me to sleep.

Coach Madden is right to call out the NFL on this one.

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Potter-Randall merger: Is it remotely possible?

Nancy Tanner is running for Potter County judge.

I’m seeing an increasing number of her lawn signs cropping up on yards — in Randall County.

The appearance of these signs begs a question I’ve been kicking around in my noggin for the nearly two decades I’ve lived in Amarillo: Why don’t the counties merge?

Here’s a bit of background for readers of this blog who live far away.

* Amarillo straddles the line dividing Potter and Randall counties. It serves as the Potter County seat; the Randall County seat is about 12 miles south on Interstate 27 in Canyon. The city’s population is now very close to 200,000 residents. Roughly 60 percent of whom live in Potter County, the rest in Randall County.

* Randall County’s main courthouse complex is in Canyon, but the bulk of its business is done at its annex in south Amarillo, which collects about 80 percent of all the revenue for the county and adjudicates a similar percentage of all the small-claims crimes decided by the justice of the peace.

* Amarillo, indeed, comprises about 85 percent of Randall County’s population and generates about 80 percent of the county’s property tax revenue.

* The Randall County jail sits on the southern edge of Amarillo, next to the Youth Center of the High Plains.

All that said, the Potter County judge race featuring five candidates running for the Republican nomination is of interest to Randall County residents because many of them work in Potter County. As for Tanner’s yard signs showing up in a county where residents cannot vote for her, that’s just good politics on her party. They put her name out there and give her more of a ubiquitous presence. I’m quite sure the other candidates — those with the money to spend — will do the same thing eventually.

Back to the question of a merger. It’s always made sense to me to meld the counties into one, given their common interests and the fact that Amarillo sits atop the line dividing them.

It’s an immensely complicated process politically. How would one merge the county governments? Who gets to keep their job? Who would lose theirs? How do you settle the obvious turf fights? How do you accomplish this thing legally? Would Canyon residents want to lose their status as the county seat? Lastly, what would you call this new county and how do we settle on a name?

It would require at minimum a constitutional amendment election, meaning that all Texans would have to vote to allow the counties to merge in a statewide referendum. We’ve amended the Texas Constitution for far less consequential things than this, so this is a natural.

I know this topic has been nibbled at for many years. Nothing ever happens for obvious reasons. Merging the counties would step on too many political toes and there would be too many battles to fight. No one seems to have the stomach for fighting them.

I get all that.

Lawn signs, though, for candidates running for office in a neighboring county seem to make as much sense as having two counties of nearly identical size sharing a single significant city.

Which is to say it makes little or no sense at all.

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Weather changes part of life in Panhandle

We have a saying in the Texas Panhandle: If you don’t like the weather, wait 20 minutes; it’ll change.

I hear now that the forecast for Thursday is supposed to be in the teens with biting northerly wind. It will return to a “balmy” 50 degrees or so with winds shifting in the other direction.

The weather today was actually quite pleasant. The temp hit 50-something with light winds.

I’ve learned over 19 years of living here to expect the unexpected. Nothing surprises me. Cold today, warm tomorrow, cold the day after that.

Actually, I got my baptism to ever-changing Texas weather along the Gulf Coast, where the temperature doesn’t change much — especially during the summer — but where rain arrives suddenly, and in torrents to boot!

Many times during our stay in Beaumont from 1984 until 1995 we would watch storm clouds boil up out of nowhere during the heat of the summer, drop about 6 inches of rain in about an hour, maybe two, then the sky would clear, the sun would return, steam would rise from the ground, the mosquitos would descend on human victims by the millions and the temperature would climb back to its customary 90-plus degrees.

Then the cycle would repeat itself the next day. And the day after that.

Here, the temps change dramatically, particularly during the winter.

It does get cold in Amarillo. As in biting, face-numbing cold. Our older son moved here after graduating from Sam Houston State University in December 1995. We went to his commencement, loaded up a rented truck with his gear and drove from Huntsville to Amarillo. It was 80 degrees when we left Huntsville; it was about 10 degrees when we arrived in Amarillo.

I recall him telling me a day or two after arriving here that he couldn’t “feel my face.”

Poor guy.

It changes rapidly. We’ve all learned that reality and have become as accustomed the rapid change here as we got used to the incessant heat and humidity on the Gulf Coast.

Besides, what in the world can we do about it? Not a single thing.

We’ve learned to just roll with it — and wait 20 minutes.

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Let’s take care when talking about hardship

My sincere hope for the budding Texas campaign for governor is that the major parties’ presumptive nominees put to rest questions about personal histories.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Wendy Davis is having to answer questions about some fuzziness in her story, about the timing of her failed marriages. Her campaign is now going on the attack, accusing Republican foes of sexism by criticizing the success of a female candidate.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2014/01/21/264579414/critics-seize-on-blurry-details-in-wendy-davis-story

This counter-attack launched against presumptive Republican nominee Greg Abbott can go too far.

Abbott is the state’s attorney general, a former trial court judge and a former state Supreme Court justice. He, too, has endured some hardship in his life.

Back when he was in his mid-20s, Abbott took a break from preparing for his bar exam and went jogging. A tree fell on him, breaking his back — and confining him to a wheelchair, where he’s been ever since.

Abbott also has had to overcome considerable difficulty to achieve the heights he has reached.

With that in mind, the Davis campaign will need to be careful about how it portrays the criticisms against her and how it characterizes the attorney general’s life story.

It’s one key reason why Davis needs to set the record straight once and for all and do it early so we can focus instead on the issues that ought to decide this first campaign — since 2002 — for Texas governor that does not include Rick Perry.

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There goes a one-time GOP ’16 hopeful

It was kind of an open secret that Bob McDonnell wanted to run for president in 2016.

Maybe he still does. However, the news out of Virginia — where he served a single term as governor — is pretty bad. Seems the former Republican governor has been indicted, along with his wife, for illegally accepting lavish campaign gifts from donors.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/196019-former-va-gov-bob-mcdonnell-and-wife-charged-with-federal

A federal grand jury has indicted the McDonnells on 14 counts of receiving illegal gifts from Jonnie R. Williams Sr.

Ex-Gov. McDonnell issued a statement today declaring the gifts were legal, yet he still apologized to the residents of Virginia for exercising poor judgment.

The indictment says McDonnell allegedly did favors for Williams in return for the gifts, which of course he has denied.

I won’t comment on the merits of the case, given that I don’t know much about the matter in question.

I think it’s relatively safe to conclude, though, that Bob McDonnell’s presidential aspirations have been tossed into the trash can … no matter how this case turns out. That’s how these things usually play out.

Remember when John Edwards was thought to be the Democrats’ golden boy? That didn’t work out too well, either. These kinds of investigations have an amazing shelf life, as the former Virginia governor is likely to learn.

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