Monthly Archives: June 2014

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R.I.P., heroic American

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An American hero has died. He’s the last of a special brand of fighting men who, when duty called during our nation’s bloodiest war, answered in a unique and inspiring way.

Chester Nez, 93, died in Albuquerque, N.M. He was the last of the original 29 Code Talkers, Navajos who were tasked with developing a code that the enemy could not decipher.

http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2014/06/last_of_world_war_iis_original.html#incart_river_default

I long have wondered something about the tactic developed during World War II that produced the Code Talkers: Who in the world at what was then called the War Department come up with this idea?

It was utterly brilliant.

Nez was one of 29 men who formed the first Code Talker unit. The Navajos developed a glossary that they expanded into a full vocabulary of terms they used to communicate with each other in the Pacific Theater of operations. The Japanese had been able to crack many encryptions. The Navajo code? Forget about it.

The Code Talkers were speaking in a language that had not put into writing. The Japanese would hear and could not tell what language it was, let alone what the U.S. Marines who spoke were saying.

“It’s one of the greatest parts of history that we used our own native language during World War II,” Mr. Nez said in a 2009 interview with the Associated Press. “We’re very proud of it.”

The next year, Mr. Nez said that “the Japanese did everything in their power to break the code but they never did.”

The Code Talkers would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2001 and would be acclaimed for the genius they used in employing such an amazingly innovative tactic to use against a fierce enemy.

May this great hero, Chester Nez, now rest with the others who helped their nation win a titanic struggle.

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Hot time arrives in Panhandle

We’re likely to set a temperature record for the date in Amarillo before today ends.

I won’t predict what it will be. I will predict, however, what’s going to be on the lips of a lot of my friends and neighbors: “Man, it’s too hot out there. When is it going to cool off? I’m tired of the heat … already.”

Too bad, fellow travelers.

I’ll now remind everyone of what we were saying just about eight or so weeks ago. We were wishing, begging, even praying for warm weather to get here. Don’t you remember that? I believe I might have said a prayer or two in seeking some warmth.

Our prayers have been answered, as if we didn’t know they would be, given the time of year and our location here on the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle.

Summer’s still about two weeks away. However, it’s close enough to actual summer to be good enough for Mother Nature to bring some heat the region.

Just remember: It gets like this every single, solitary year. We’re going to get hot. That’s what it means to live here, just as it means that we’ll get cold in the winter — and often well into the spring.

Summer’s about to arrive.

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Tea party hangs on in Dixie

It looks as though the national tea party still has a dog in the hunt, as the saying goes.

At least for now.

Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel is holding to a slim lead in the Republican primary race with incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran. If the challenger fails to get to 50 percent when all the votes are counted — he stands at 49.6 percent with 97 percent of the ballots counted — the two men are headed for a June 23 runoff.

It was thought that perhaps the tea party perhaps could lose this one, too, as it had in other states — that are not Texas. McDaniel has been campaigning against Cochran’s influence in the Senate and the seniority he’s built and, oh yes, all that public money that he directs toward his home state. McDaniel’s one of those “outsiders” who will shake things up.

From where I sit a few hundred miles west of Mississippi, it appears McDaniel would like to become one of those folks who wants it done his way or no way at all. Well, the results aren’t in. We’ll have to wait a few more days, perhaps weeks, to know whether the Mississippi Republican Party has snapped out of it.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/mcdaniel-cochran-appear-headed-runoff-mississippi-n121851

What is most astounding is that McDaniel still holds a lead after the hideous story broke about his campaign goons breaking into a nursing home to photograph Cochran’s bed-ridden wife to make an anti-Cochran campaign video highlighting the senator’s alleged “infidelity.”

It’s one of the more bizarre political blow-ups I’ve seen in some time.

Decency seems to have hit the road in Dixie.

I am anxious to see how this nastiness plays out.

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Say it ain't so, Mississippi

As I write this short blog post, tea party candidate Chris McDaniel is holding onto a slim lead over Thad Cochran in the race for Cochran’s U.S. Senate seat.

Cochran is a conservative Republican seeking his seventh term in the Senate. He’s also a champion of what’s called “pork-barrel” legislation, bringing money and federal projects to Mississippi. The tea party doesn’t like that kind of thing. Frankly, neither do I.

But the campaign took a hideous turn down the stretch for the Republican Party nomination. McDaniel supporters broke into the nursing home where Mrs. Cochran has lived for the past dozen or so years. She’s incapacitated. She suffers from dementia. Yet the McDaniel goons thought they’d take pictures of her to use in an anti-Cochran political ad that talks about his alleged relationships with women other than his wife.

I had hoped Mississippians would turn on McDaniel over this matter. His henchmen have been charged with criminal trespass in this hideous display of disgracefully dirty politics.

They’ve counted nearly 90 percent of the vote. It doesn’t look good for Sen. Cochran. It doesn’t look good, either, for Mississippi Republicans who may be about to nominate in whose name this disgraceful act was committed.

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Apology won't cut it

Betting is for fools, but if I were a betting man I’d say the White House apology for brokering the prisoner exchange to gain the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl won’t quiet the Capitol Hill critics.

To be honest, I don’t blame congressional critics for being ticked off.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/208070-white-house-apologizes-to-senate-intelligence

The White House has called it an “oversight” that it didn’t notify congressional leaders in advance of the release and the exchange. Officials issued the apology to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein. House Speaker John Boehner says it’s more than an oversight; he believes the White House knew Congress would kill the deal. I’ll leave it mind readers to determine whether Boehner knows what he’s talking about.

Still, the deal has enraged members of both parties in both houses of Congress.

A 2013 law required congressional notification of such activity. The White House had said initially that it did tell some lawmakers that a deal was in the works. Now, though, the White House is singing a different tune.

Here’s another question that needs asking: Did you or did you not talk to Capitol Hill about this deal in advance?

Do I think a crime was committed here? No. I think we have instead a terrible political miscalculation that well could explode all over the president, his national security team and the Pentagon.

A deeper concern for me is whether Sgt. Bergdahl deserted his post. Does that preclude his country seeking his release from the Taliban? No. It does raise questions that need some air-tight answers.

Did he walk away from his post? Did his doing so put his comrades at undue risk? Did he go willingly with the Taliban when they captured him?

Offering an apology might assuage a tiny bit of anger among some lawmakers. However, if they have a role to play under the law in these kinds of warfare “transactions,” they have reason to demand some answers.

Moreover, Sgt. Bergdahl has some serious questions awaiting him when he gets home.

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This just in: I'm going to live

Given that I posted a blog item a few days ago about my impending medical appointment at the Thomas Creek Veterans Medical Center in Amarillo, I thought I’d provide a brief — and detail-free — update.

The bottom line: I’m going to live a good bit longer, if everything stays the same for a while.

I mention all this only because of the controversy surrounding the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA secretary, Eric Shinseki, has resigned. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, wants the FBI to investigate the deaths of those 40 veterans in Phoenix. President Obama has all but said heads likely will roll as the investigation continues. VA medical centers across the country now are under the microscope — and I only can assume that includes the Creek medical center here in Amarillo.

No worries for yours truly. I was in and out in less than an hour. Got the lab work done. Visited with the nurse practitioner, who read me the results of the labs; all of ’em look good.

I was out the door and headed for the house.

Oh, how I hope the Creek center isn’t producing the hideously long wait times discovered at other VA-run hospitals.

So far, barely a year into my VA medical enrollment, I cannot complain one teeny-tiny bit about the care I’ve received.

Let’s hope it stays that way.

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Food fight erupts in Congress

There likely can be no greater example of the current political pettiness infecting Congress than the fight that’s erupting over first lady Michelle Obama’s desire to have our children eat healthier meals in school.

http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/watch/celeb-chef-bashes-gop-food-plan-272409155677

Congressional Republicans want to scale back Mrs. Obama’s healthy-eating program. They contend, along with their activist friends, that the first lady is trying to force feed healthy eating habits in our public schools, making school administrators adhere to silly dietary rules.

The first lady has taken an uncharacteristically (for her) stance in response to the criticism. She’s fighting back.

She’s noting that childhood obesity has begun to decline in the country. Children’s healthier school meals are having a tangible — and positive — impact on their health.

And somehow this is seen as a bad thing?

I’ll need some help understand this one, folks.

Congressional Republicans want to roll back the standards the government has enacted for our kids. The first lady says she’s offended as a mother and as an American. She blasts Republicans for “playing politics with our nation’s children.”

Is there no end, or limit, to this political petulance?

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Dewhurst lost his good-government voice

Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka thinks that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst never understood the changing nature of the Texas Republican Party.

Thus, state Sen. Dan Patrick was able to beat him to become the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/what-happened-david-dewhurst

I want to posit another notion. It is that Dewhurst lost his voice when he tried to outscream the far right wing of his party.

His former voice was one that endorsed good government. He tried to break into the ranks of the tea party wing of the GOP by sounding like them. It turned out he wasn’t very fluent in tea party-speak.

He said all those things about being tough on illegal immigration, about cutting taxes and fighting to abolish the Affordable Care Act. He just wasn’t very good at spouting that kind of rhetoric.

So now David Dewhurst is officially a lame duck. The 2015 Legislature will convene without him. Patrick or Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte will preside over the Senate.

Patrick speaks the tea party language. Van de Putte speaks the language of good government.

We’ll know in due course if the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor will be true to her own voice and her own set of principles. David Dewhurst lost his voice — and his way.

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Whether to court-martial Bergdahl

The rhetoric is getting pretty heated now about the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and whether he should be tried for desertion.

Some of his combat “buddies” are saying Bergdahl left his post before being captured in Afghanistan by the Taliban. He was held captive for five years until his release this weekend in an exchange of prisoners; the Taliban got five of their leading militants in return for Bergdahl.

So, what’s the next course of action?

How about letting the Army interrogate everyone with knowledge of what happened when Bergdahl was taken by the Taliban? The Army has a pretty capable judge advocate corps of lawyers who can get to the heart of what went down.

If it’s decided that Bergdahl did desert his post, that he left his comrades in the lurch, that he committed what some are calling an act of treason, then he ought to be court-martialed.

The initial word from the Pentagon was that the Army likely wouldn’t court-martial the young man, believing apparently that he’d suffered enough.

I’m not so sure about that. I’d like to see the Army investigate this matter fully and make a careful, studied determination of what happened five years ago.

Yes, there have been comments made. To date, none of them has been corroborated. Let’s look for the truth.

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Why put party labels on judges?

Critics of this blog no doubt are going to blast me for suggesting this a partisan idea.

Too bad. Here goes anyway.

Why in the world do we in Texas have to elect judges on partisan ballots? Believe it nor not, I asked the question when I lived in a heavily Democratic region of the state — in Jefferson County on the Gulf Coast — and I’m asking it yet again.

I’ve given up on the notion of going to an appointment/retention concept used in many other states. It’s when the governor appoints a judge and the judge then stands for what’s called a “retention election.” Voters can keep the judge or toss him or her out.

I’ll stick, therefore, to the notion that Texas eliminates good judges who happen to belong to the “out” party, the one no longer in favor with voters. In Texas — except for some pockets — that means Republicans are “in,” while Democrats are “out.” Dallas County, interestingly, is elected Democratic judges. Big deal. It isn’t any better than it is, say, in the Panhandle. Good GOP judicial candidates are getting bounced out in Dallas County the way good Democratic candidates keep losing.

I’ve asked the question many times of judges and judicial candidates: What is the difference between Republican justice and Democratic justice?

Their answers don’t turn on partisanship. They turn instead on judicial philosophy. They either have a “liberal” view of justice or a “conservative” view. Why, then, can’t voters decide on the merits of a candidate based on his or her judicial philosophy, regardless of party?

All of this would take an amendment to the Texas Constitution. It won’t happen, of course, as long as Republicans control both legislative houses, the governor’s office and the lieutenant governor’s office. Why should it change? The GOP controls everything.

The same thing can be said when Democrats ran the show. They didn’t show any inclination to changing the Constitution, either.

We’re stuck with a lousy judicial election system.