Monthly Archives: March 2014

Uncategorized

Zoo becomes a killing field?

What in the world is going on at the Copenhagen, Denmark zoo?

The folks who run the place are killing animals to make room for other animals. First, it was a giraffe named Marius that zookeepers put down. Why? Because they wanted to make room for another male giraffe.

Now this week the zoo euthanized four lions — a breeding pair, male and female, and two cubs — to pave the way for a new male lion.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/world/europe/copenhagen-zoo-lions/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

I don’t get this.

Zoo officials say the killing of the lions was necessary because they were too old to produce more offspring; what’s more, the new male lion would have killed the cubs, which is normal in the wild when a male lion takes over a pride. Any cub that he doesn’t bring into the world is a goner. I’ve seen enough National Geographic and Discovery Channel specials to know that the law of the wild is brutal and without remorse at times.

Let’s wait a minute.

A zoo isn’t the wild, no matter how badly zookeepers want to make it seem so for the critters it keeps.

Aren’t there exchanges among zoos that would enable the Copenhagen zoo to send the lions elsewhere to make room for the big, bad male lion it wants to bring in? Zoo officials said they tried to place the lions in other locations “but there wasn’t any interest.”

Human interest being what it is, the Copenhagen zoo has just bought itself a bucket load of bad feelings from around the world — as it did when it killed Marius the giraffe, which reportedly was highly popular among young visitors to the zoo.

Zoos are supposed to be sanctuaries for animals that have been captured or in some cases rescued from the wild because — for whatever reason — they cannot fend for themselves. Copenhagen’s zoo, instead, seems to be turning itself into a killing zone.

Uncategorized

Secret Service agents need to go

You’re a highly trained security officer, trained to protect the president of the United States, the head of state and government of the most powerful nation in the history of the world.

Your government has spent a lot of public money to train you to perform your duties. Therefore, your business is our business and you are accountable not just to the Leader of the Free World, but to the people who’ve bankrolled your training.

Then you go on a bender in Europe as the president is preparing to visit with heads of state of our nation’s European allies. You end up passed out in a hotel hallway. You’re drunk as a skunk, acting in a decidedly unprofessional way while representing — supposedly — the best and the brightest of this nation’s law enforcement community.

And you’re put on administrative leave?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/201860-carney-obama-has-zero-tolerance-for-misconduct

Three Secret Service officers are in serious trouble for conduct so reprehensible it defies description. It’s not the first time. Other officers assigned to the president’s security detail were fired after they were caught cavorting with hookers in Colombia.

This latest incident is just as bad. Maybe worse, given that at least one of the agents rendered himself useless, as he was floundering in a drunken stupor in The Netherlands.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said this about the incident: “The president believes as he has said in the past that everybody representing the United States of America overseas needs to hold himself or herself to the highest standards and he supports Director (Julia) Pierson’s approach, zero-tolerance approach, on these matters.”

Zero tolerance. That sounds good enough for me.

Uncategorized

Yes, Russia is a global power

President Obama likely needs to rethink his assessment of Russia’s place in the world of great powers.

He said this week that Russia is a “regional power” that doesn’t pose the greatest threat to the United States. The president said his greater concern is a nuclear bomb going off in Manhattan.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/obama-russia-regional-power-not-top-geopolitical-foe-n61601

Why does the president need to reconsider this assessment of Russia? Two words come to mind: nuclear arsenal.

Russia inherited the bulk of the Soviet Union’s stockpile of nukes when the U.S.S.R. folded its tent in 1991. That fact alone makes the Russians a world power, no matter the strength of the Soviets’ main foe, the United States of America.

President Obama has been asked in recent days whether 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was right to call Russia our No. 1 geopolitical foe. Obama said “no,” which comes as no surprise. Indeed, he is right to gauge the threat posed by international terror networks as the nation’s top threat. The Russian incursion into Ukraine, its influence on Ukrainian internal affairs and its threat of more military intervention should be of grave concern throughout Europe.

The president, though, seems intent on sticking it in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eye when he downplays the worldwide threat that Russia poses. Yes, the Russians are a significant regional power. They also do possess all those nukes that, as near as anyone can tell, are capable of destroying life as we know it on Planet Earth.

That fact alone makes them a global threat.

Whatever the president says in public probably doesn’t mirror what he and his brain trust are saying about Russia in the Situation Room.

Uncategorized

Search narrows; conclusion near?

They’re narrowing the search area in the southern Indian Ocean where it is believed Malaysia Air Flight MH 370 went down.

Does that mean an end to the nightmarish uncertainty that breaks the hearts of those awaiting word of their loved ones’ fate?

Let us pray it is so.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=1023038#.UzK2PFJOWt8

Without a conclusive discovery of wreckage that will lead searchers to the bottom of the ocean where they would locate the bulk of what’s left of the Boeing 777, conspiracies are going to run wild. They do no one any good.

This search has captivated the world. It has involved a multi-national team of oceanographers, aviators, sailors, scientists, politicians and anyone with any semblance of expertise on these matters. The Malaysian government will have to explain to the world why it informed loved ones via text message that the 239 passengers and crew aboard MH 370 likely are “gone.”

The mystery, captivating as it is, has brought sheer agony to many loved ones.

The ocean today reportedly is calmer. Satellite pictures are revealing more sightings of possible debris. Air crews have laid eyes on what they believe is wreckage.

Let there be a conclusion to this agony.

Uncategorized

Memento returns home

When you spend a career in daily journalism, you are able to collect some mementos.

I thought one of them was gone after I left my last full-time journalism job. Silly me. I got it back just the other day. I feel strangely whole again.

My career in daily journalism came to an abrupt end on Aug. 30, 2012. I resigned — unhappily — from my job and was gone. Company “restructuring” can be a bitch, you know?

What did I leave behind? It was a silly bumper sticker I’ve been packing around since my older son was a sophomore in high school. A teacher of his gave him the bumper sticker and asked him to give it to me. He wanted to stick it in my ear with the bumper-sticker slogan, “I Don’t Believe the Liberal Media.”

I’ve carried it around with great pride ever since.

How did it find its way back to my hands? The librarian at the paper where I worked for nearly 18 years called me on another matter. I e-mailed her back with an answer to her call, then asked if the bumper sticker, which was pasted on the door jamb to my former office, was still there. “Yes,” she said. I asked her if she could return it to me, which she did.

My friends and others who know my political leanings know the bumper sticker is meant to be self-deprecating. They know I’m one of those “liberal media” types. I display it with pride.

This artifact, though, once was a source of tension with some colleagues at the newspaper where I worked — or so I was led to believe.

My office at the Amarillo Globe-News had been in what we called “the old building,” next to the publisher’s office. The fellow who replaced the publisher who hired me decided to make a change: He decided to move me and my staff out of that office to another location. We eventually ended up in the newsroom, across the parking lot in the newer building.

As I moved into my new digs, I put the “I Don’t Believe the Liberal Media” sign on my window, thinking my colleagues would know that I was poking fun at myself.

Not everyone, I guess, understood the irony of the sign. One of them approached me the morning of my first full day in the newsroom and informed me that “some of us” took offense at the sign. My jaw dropped. She didn’t understand the intent of the sign, which was to poke fun at myself, not to make any serious political statement. My colleague then informed me she would take the matter up with our human resources director if I didn’t remove the sign.

I relented. The sign came down and I would resent the individual for the rest of the time she worked at the newspaper.

That’s in the increasingly distant past now.

I see bumper stickers occasionally with that “I Don’t Believe … ” message on the back of vehicles driving around town. When I do, I cannot help but smile. They’re intended to convey a serious message.

I take it as a joke. I’m just glad to have my little keepsake back home.

Uncategorized

Visit the Panhandle? Not on this tour, Leticia

4 Comments

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/files/2014/03/VDP-bus-tour.jpg

OK, kids. Take a good look at the picture attached here.

It lines out Democratic Texas lieutenant governor nominee Leticia Van de Putte’s upcoming tour of Texas.

I noticed a major Texas city is missing from that itinerary. It’s Amarillo.

But in a message to supporters, Van de Putte, a Democratic state senator from San Antonio, said this: “It’s a big responsibility in a big state, and I know I’m up to the challenge. I’ll travel more than 2,500 miles – from the vibrant Rio Grande Valley and border region to the vast high plains of the Panhandle to the Gulf Coast before ending up in the shadow of our state capitol dome – to see, hear, and experience firsthand all the things that make Texas so exceptional.”

“To the vast high plains of the Panhandle,” she writes.

Well, as I look at the itinerary posted on the picture, the closest city to the Panhandle is Lubbock, which is 120 miles south of Amarillo in what’s called the “South Plains” region.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/03/van-de-putte-announces-statewide-bus-tour/

The blog posted on mysanantonio.com notes that Van de Putte is going to see virtually the entire state on her bus tour. “Virtually” is the key word here. She ain’t coming to the Panhandle.

I do hope the Democratic lieutenant governor nominee can find her way here … eventually.

For now, she needs to re-learn to locate region that comprises the “vast high plains of the Panhandle.”

Uncategorized

'Dress code' needs revisiting

You know the saying about how “No good deed goes unpunished,” yes?

A Colorado girl tried to do a good deed for a friend and got punished by her school for violating its dress code.

Talk about a zero-tolerance policy for kindness.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/25/girl-barred-from-school-for-shaving-her-head-to-support-friend-with-cancer/?cmpid=cmty_twitter_fn

Grand Junction, Colo., student Delaney Campbell suffers from cancer. Chemotherapy has made her hair fall out. She’s bald. Her best friend, Kamryn Renfro, shaved her head to show support for her pal.

The school sent Kamryn home because head-shaving violates school dress code policies.

The uproar has been quick and vigorous. The school has been criticized vehemently for its strict adherence to a policy that some have argued is irrelevant in this case. Is shaving one’s head violating a “dress code”? Good question.

As for Kamryn’s display of solidarity with her best friend, the school would have been wise to waive the rules in this instance and let the girls stand together. Delaney’s condition prompted a 9-year-old pal to perform an act of kindness — which she did with her parents’ permission.

The story might end well for everyone, though.

The school, a private academy, has allowed Kamryn back to class, where she’ll remain pending a board of directors meeting set for tonight.

Let’s hope sanity prevails and the board declines to punish a little girl for performing a good deed on her friend’s behalf.

Uncategorized

Hats off to Texas teen

A big shout out has to go to a Baytown, Texas girl who showed a good bit of civic-minded spunk.

A Baytown police officer was parked recently in a fire zone at an apartment complex. Fourteen-year-old Annie James spotted the vehicle and wrote a $10 parking ticket and placed it on the windshield of the vehicle driven by Officer Tommy King.

http://news.yahoo.com/texas-teen-gives-police-parking-ticket-151406123.html

The officer said he saw the sheet of paper, read the hand-written note and “started laughing immediately.”

Annie had ordered King to pay $10 — to the apartment manager.

A couple of lessons stand out here.

One is that Annie didn’t want the money for herself. Her selflessness showed in ordering the officer to pay someone else. Annie could have issued the order for her own benefit and used the money to, oh, play video games at a mall arcade. She chose instead to take a more noble path.

The second lesson is for police and other public employees to obey the law, no matter how “trivial” they might seem.

Officer King took the issuance of the “ticket” in stride and good cheer and rewarded Annie with a $40 gift card to Toys R Us.

To think some folks think badly of our younger folks.

Good job, Annie.

Uncategorized

G-8 gives Russia the heave-ho

The Group of Eight industrialized nations has reduced its ranks by one.

The more I think about it, this might be the unkindest cut of all that Russia will endure as punishment for its interference in Ukraine’s sovereign affairs.

The G-8 is now the G-7, as the remaining nations have given Russia the boot.

http://news.yahoo.com/kicking-russia-g8-now-g7-214800555.html

The G-8 had planned to meet in Sochi, Russia. The G-7 will meet in Brussels, Belgium.

The punishment is going to sting because Russia sought hard to be included in the industrialized consortium of nations after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Joining the other great industrialized powers — such as the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy, Canada and Germany — meant a great deal to a nation struggling to find its way out of its communist past.

The Russian Federation emerged from the post-commie era a corrupt and struggling nation. Then it took its place at the table along with the other great industrialized powers.

Now it’s been relegated to pariah status, owing to its takeover of Crimea, its interference in Ukraine’s political unrest and its threat of more military intervention.

It’s been suggested by some in this country that the United States should arm the Ukrainians, that it should rattle its sabers more loudly. U.S.-led economic sanctions already are beginning to bite. Will they persuade Russia to back out of Ukraine? Probably not.

Will the G-7 decision to no longer include the Russians change the Kremlin’s attitude? Again, no.

It’s still going to sting. A lot. As it should.

Uncategorized

Closure, finally, for Flight 370 families

Sixteen days after a Boeing 777 disappeared, the grieving families of the 239 people on board have a semblance of closure.

Finally, it has come.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced today that Flight MH 370 crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, far from any possible landing sites.

http://news.yahoo.com/malaysia-pm-plane-plunged-indian-ocean-140639275–finance.html

The Malaysia Air flight took off March 8 from Kuala Lumpur, reportedly took a sharp turn to the west and then apparently headed south over the ocean. Flight crews and satellites have spotted debris that searchers think belongs to the jetliner.

Still, theories — legitimate and crackpot — are being bandied about regarding what happened to the jetliner. Searchers hope to obtain the vital information contained in the flight data recorder that lies at the bottom of the ocean. Once they collect that recorder, they’ll learn the truth about what happened to MH 370.

But today’s announcement carries a bit of mystery itself. The Malaysian government reportedly sent — get ready for this — text messages to family members informing them their loved ones are lost and presumed dead.

Text messages.

I’m trying to grasp why the government felt the need to inform these grieving individuals about this tragic outcome in such a seemingly heartless fashion. It’s likely they’ll have to explain that one to an inquiring worldwide community.

But the family members and loved ones now know what they’ve feared all along.