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New normal in gas prices no longer so new

The “new normal” in gasoline prices used to be cause for laughter around our house.

I remember when Mom or Dad would pull up to the service station pump and tell the attendant — yes, they still have attendants in my home state of Oregon — to put a “dollar’s worth of regular” into the tank. That would be about four gallons. Off we went and tooled around for the rest of the day, maybe a bit into the next one.

Those days are gone.

Now comes news that gas prices are declining. They’re at the lowest level since 2010. They’re heading downward into the new year.

Gas prices at lowest level since 2010

It’s not that we should be surprised that gasoline still costs about $3 a gallon in Amarillo, which is a bit lower than the rest of the state. My wife and I just returned from the Metroplex and were surprised to learn that drivers there are paying about 20 cents more per gallon than we are.

We’re all going to welcome the prospect of paying less for gas in the new year — and hopefully beyond.

Automakers are building more fuel-efficient cars, people are buying them (we’re driving a Toyota hybrid and loving the 45 miles per gallon were getting with that little buggy) and domestic energy producers are pulling a lot of oil out of the ground in newly discovered well fields way up yonder near the Canadian border.

I still have to chuckle at the notion that gasoline that dips below 3 bucks a gallon is now considered “cheap.”

My memory of the old days remains too fresh.

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Our new year has arrived with great joy

Years that come in with “firsts” are always worth remembering.

We welcomed 2014 in fine fashion. It was so fine that I want to share just a bit of it here.

The end of the year just past saw us drive to Allen to spend some time with our sons and with one of the boys’ family, our daughter-in-law, our grandson and our brand new granddaughter.

It was a glorious couple of days to be sure. I’ll stipulate right up front that it was our first new year with our little one, our granddaughter Emma Nicole, who’s about to turn 10 months in just a few days.

Why is that so special? It’s hard to define. It falls into that category of life’s mysteries that you have to experience to understand completely.

Grandparents know what I’m saying.

Our older son spent a day with us before he returned home the next day. We spent the next two days and nights with our younger son and his family.

Ah, but Emma stole the show. Make no mistake about that.

Our grandson left to spend time with his father. We said so long to him as he departed New Year’s Eve. Our son and daughter-in-law planned an evening out with friends to ring in the new year.

Would we mind staying home with Emma? Uhhh, no. We not only didn’t mind, we welcomed the idea of playing with her until she — or we — crashed for the night. We laughed the evening away with our little pumpkin. She turned in for the night, but only after filling us with this unique joy that remains beyond my ability to describe it.

Did we stay up until midnight? Nope. We turned in right after Emma.

We awoke the next morning and were greeted with her cheerful little smile.

OK, so maybe our new year wasn’t all that special.

But it was to us. This will be a good year, indeed.

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Not a ‘career pol’? Give me a break

Don Huffines cracks me up.

I stumbled onto his website this New Year’s morn and found something hackneyed and time-worn: a declaration that a politician is not a “career politician” and who is a “true conservative.”

Home

Huffines is running against state Sen. John Carona of Dallas.

Carona’s been in the Legislature for a while. I don’t know much about him, except that he, too, declares himself to be a conservative. My bet is that he’s not conservative enough for Huffines, although I only can presume that to mean that Carona doesn’t declare his conservatism with the requisite zeal and fervor that many on the far right seem to insist in their politicians.

He vows to serve only 12 years in the Senate. Then he’ll back out … he says. Border security is a federal responsibility and if the feds don’t do the job, Huffines vows to hold ’em “accountable.” Of course, he opposes the Affordable Care Act. He wants good highways, good public education that enables parents to have more “choices,” and wants the government to let private enterprise create jobs.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. I think I’ve heard it a bazillion times during my lengthy career covering politics and government in Texas — and in Oregon, where I grew up and where my career got its start.

Don Huffines, though, is not a career politician and, by golly, he’s going to make it all happen just because of that declaration.

I’ve heard that one, too. A lot.

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Time to plan for rising sea levels

Climate change is the subject of intense debate, particularly over its cause.

Manmade or natural? It doesn’t matter to many of us who believe that the climate is, in fact, changing.

What’s more, it should matter even less to those who live along our coastlines where sea levels are rising. That is virtually beyond dispute. The ocean levels are increasing and they figure to threaten the very communities that sit at the water’s edge.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/12/24/on-climate-change-a-push-to-think-locally/

Thus is it time for local experts to take the hint from climatologists and other experts to deal with this issue locally rather than continue to think globally about climate change.

Texas is one of those many states sitting along large bodies of water that are facing increases in sea level. The Coastal Plain, in fact, rises from the Gulf of Mexico quite gradually, meaning that much of the plain rests at or just slightly above sea level for many miles inland.

We’re safe here on the Caprock, which sits nearly 3,700 feet above sea level. No one I’m aware of has said the Gulf of Mexico is going to rise that much.

But our neighbors downstate, along the Gulf Coast from the Valley to the Golden Triangle — indeed all the way along the coast eastward — need to begin thinking about the consequences of doing nothing.

It involves a lot more than just filling up sandbags, folks.

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Good bye, Mr. Simmons … and good riddance

Harold Simmons is dead at age 82.

His death has drawn a lot of attention in political circles. The billionaire Texan was a big contributor to Republican candidates and causes. That’s fine. I don’t begrudge that one bit.

What I do begrudge, though, is the $4 million he gave to a particular GOP effort.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/12/29/harold-simmons-gop-mega-donor-dead-82/

It occurred during the 2004 presidential campaign between President George W. Bush and U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry. Simmons kicked in the big dough to a group dedicated to smearing Kerry’s reputation, which he earned while serving in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth thought it would smear Kerry’s war record with lies, suggesting he didn’t really earn the medals for valor while serving during that long-ago war.

It was a disgraceful display of rotten politics — which can be pretty rotten even without this kind of defamation.

Simmons played a hand in that slander, which must not go unnoticed as the political world bids good bye to 2013 and to this individual.

I’m quite aware that both parties are awash in lots of money, much of which is used as ammo to smear candidates from the other side. None of it is appealing. None of it is fair.

The “swift boating,” of John Kerry, though, will stand for a long time as an example of how politics can stink to high heaven.

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MSNBC jokesters toss a bomb at Romney clan

MSNBC went over the line.

With both feet.

Check out this link, taken from CNN.com, about a disgraceful display of bad taste exhibited on MSNBC, having to do with Mitt Romney’s family and the presence of an infant sitting on the former Republican presidential candidate’s knee.

http://thehill.com/video/in-the-news/194168-lemon-slams-msnbc-for-romney-grandson-joke

MSNBC talk-show host Melissa Harris-Perry is an interesting, intelligent individual who hosts a weekend show on the cable network. For the life of me I cannot fathom why she allowed this discussion making fun of Mitt Romney’s adopted grandson, an African-American infant named Kieran, to make some point about the Republican Party’s difficulty with minority voters.

I’ve long held to the belief that one should not poke fun at family members, or make fun of people’s appearance or the sound of their name. For the network to use a baby to make a cheap political point simply is beyond disgusting.

As the commentators noted on this CNN link, adoption should be saluted as something wonderful and grand. That’s all should have mattered when MSNBC showed the photo of Mitt and Ann Romney with their grandchildren.

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Obama most admired man in U.S. Who knew?

The Gallup Poll has just released a survey that is going to surprise more than a few folks. It surprised me, for example.

It says President Barack Obama is the most admired man in America — by a comfortable margin at that.

http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/obama-clinton-most-admired-gallup

The most admired woman happens to be former first lady/Sen./Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Why is this so surprising? I see a couple of interesting things here.

The first one is obvious. President Obama has had a rough year, particularly as it relates to the unveiling of the Affordable Care Act. The debut of the ACA was a disaster, technically speaking. The rollout came on top of a barrage of criticism of the ACA from Republicans who managed somehow to win the argument.

Despite all the bad press, the president continues to stand fairly tall in the minds of millions of Americans.

Much the same can be said of Hillary Clinton, who left public office at the beginning of the year as a controversy over her office’s handling of an uprising in Libya drew fire. The consulate in Benghazi was attacked, four Americans died in a ferocious fire fight and Clinton took lots of heat over the way her office handled the initial response.

Yet, for the 12th year in a row, she remains America’s most admired woman.

The second factor is interesting as well, in that Gallup isn’t exactly known for favoring so-called “liberals.” The poll long has been viewed by observers as tilting a tad to the right. Still, the poll is deemed reputable.

The lesson here might only be that we need not pay too much attention to the chattering class that so often seems to outshout the rest of the us.

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Phil back on ‘Duck Dynasty,’ curiosity aroused

Having declared that I’ve never watched “Duck Dynasty,” I now might — let me reiterate might — catch an episode or two now that Duck daddy Phil is back in the game.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2013/12/that-phil-guy-is-back-on-duck-dynasty-so-do-i-have-to-watch-it-now.html/

A&E lifted Phil Robertson’s short-lived suspension after the 67-year-old guy said some things to GQ magazine about how he believes homosexuality is a sin, according to the Bible. His comments raised an uproar with the LGBT community and with folks who were offended that someone known to be a devout Christian actually would say what he believes.

A&E knew what it was getting when it hired the Robertson clan to do this show, which I guess features them huntin’ and fishin’ and living in the great outdoors, aka the Louisiana swamp.

A&E made the wrong call, in my view, in suspending ol’ man Phil. It’s not that agree with the way he expressed himself. He spoke crudely to GQ, but that’s part of his shtick, or so I’ve been led to believe.

And the network knew all that.

All he did was encourage the audience that is drawn to the show. Those who Robertson offended aren’t going to watch anyway.

As for those of us out here who only have read about the show and followed the kerfuffle created by Duck Daddy’s remarks, many of us are quite likely now to watch just to see what all the fuss has been about.

I’m giving this some serious thought. I’ll let you know what I learn.

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Bin Laden is still dead, al-Qaida is growing

President Obama has sought to quell the thought that some had back in May 2011 that Osama bin Laden’s death would doom the terror organization he led.

Thus, it shouldn’t be a surprise that experts now say that al-Qaida likely is gaining strength in the Middle East and in North Africa.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/28/world/meast/al-qaeda-growing/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in Pakistan. The president announced it to the world that evening. It brought cheers in this country and throughout the world and shouts of “USA! USA! USA!” by crowds that gathered in front of the White House. But the warning came out — from the White House and from other quarters — that the war on terror must continue.

It has.

Drone strikes have taken out dozens of al-Qaida leaders; others have been captured and are awaiting justice. The nation has maintained its aggressive stance against al-Qaida and other terror groups ever since the 9/11 attacks.

We well might have entered a war without end.

That doesn’t mean we don’t keep fighting. It does mean the nation perhaps has entered a period of what could be called some form of a “new normal.” It is that we cannot ever let our guard down for a moment against those who would harm us.

The new normal requires the nation to be on high alert. Always.

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Legalize marijuana? My wheels are turning

Some people get more crotchety in their old age.

Others get more, um, reflective; they are more able to see the big picture.

I think — at least I hope — I am in that latter group.

I’ve spent a lifetime to date believing we should maintain marijuana’s illegal status. People should be punished for using the devil weed. That was how I used to think. I’m beginning to feel differently about that — and a lot of other things — as I grow older.

The states of Washington and Colorado are about to effectively legalize its use. A recent “60 Minutes” report declared that there are now more medical marijuana dispensaries in Denver that McDonald’s and Starbucks combined. It’s going to be taxed and regulated by the state. Coloradoans will be able to purchase the stuff essentially over the counter.

My home state of Oregon also has liberalized its marijuana laws. Other states have followed suit.

Meanwhile, still other states have continued to drop the hammer — as has the federal government with its minimum sentence policy — on those caught carrying and/or consuming small amounts of weed. Texas is one of them, where state police patrols are picking up drivers of vehicles loaded with grass on those so-called “routine traffic stops.”

I’m now wondering aloud whether history is finally forcing a serious change in societal attitudes toward marijuana.

Full disclosure here: I have smoked it. A very long time ago, when I was quite young, before my sons were born and mostly before I got married. My dad once asked me straight up: Have you smoked marijuana? More disclosure: I didn’t have the courage to say “yes.”

That was then. Dad is gone now and wherever he and Mom are, they know the truth. I haven’t touched the stuff in more than 40 years and, oh yes, I did inhale.

Is it sane to keep prosecuting people for consuming a substance that is no more addictive than, say, nicotine or alcohol? How do I know that? Well, I never became hooked on it, nor on alcohol. I did get hooked on cigarettes, but managed to quit cold turkey nearly 34 years ago.

That’s just me. I am aware, however, that millions of others can make similar claims.

I’m aware that I’m late getting into this discussion. What’s fascinated me over many years has been the advocacy of marijuana legalization by prominent conservatives: William F. Buckley, the economist Milton Friedman and former Secretary of State George Schultz, to name just three, all have spoken in favor of legalization. The conservative movement’s godfather, the late U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, did as well.

It’s not just the flaming liberals out there calling for this sea change.

It well might be time to catch this wave.

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