At this moment, words are failing me.

I just caught up with a story out of Norfolk, Neb., which held a Fourth of July parade to — I reckon — commemorate the founding of this glorious nation of ours.

The parade included a “float” that utterly defies any sense of decency and respect toward the office of the presidency.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/06/obama-outhouse-float_n_5561568.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

It depicts an outhouse with the words “Obama presidential library.”

In typical cowardly fashion, there was no identification of the sponsor of this exhibit. At this moment, no one seems to know who was responsible for the despicable display.

The presence of this exhibit upset residents who saw it. Some have written to the mayor’s office, to the chamber of commerce. They have called the display racist in nature and have declared themselves ashamed of their town. They are embarrassed that the exhibit would dishonor the office in such a tasteless manner.

I share their disgust.

It’s apparently not the first such exhibit to show up to protest the policies of President Barack Obama. The Huffington Post reported: “The presidential library outhouse comparison has become somewhat of a conservative meme in recent years. A similar structure was on display at Montana’s state Republican convention in 2012. And last fall, an outhouse with a ‘presidential library’ sign drew criticism in a small New Mexico town.”

Then there is this response from someone defending the display. “Rick Konopasek, a member of the Norfolk parade committee, defended the float, comparing it to a political cartoon and noting that multiple parade judges awarded it an ‘honorable mention,'” the Post reported.

I prefer to believe that political cartoons have their place on opinion pages of newspapers or in magazines. A disgraceful exhibit such this has no place on a public street at an event meant to honor the nation’s founding.

I’ll now await the comments from those who consider this to be an appropriate expression of disagreement.

Don’t misunderstand me here. I am not that worked up over a change in the way Texas motor vehicles will be marked as being properly inspected.

Beginning next March, the state won’t require motorists to have a sticker slapped on their windshields to show police officers that the vehicle’s been inspected.

The change appears to have some folks a bit nervous. Why? I have no clue.

The idea, as I understand it, is to save the state some dough, a couple million bucks a year. I guess that’s the cost of printing the stickers that go on our windshields.

Some individuals have interpreted the change as meaning the state won’t require the inspections. Wrong.

We’ll still be required to have mechanics look for safety defects in our vehicles before we purchase auto registration stickers that will continue to be displayed on our windshields.

But as with most change, some of us get a bit jumpy about it.

One lawmaker told my pal Enrique Rangel, writing for the Amarillo Globe-News, that he voted against the legislation creating the change because it was “so overreaching.” Rep. Drew Springer, R-Muenster, then told Rangel that the bill was approved with so little debate he’d forgotten about it until Rangel brought it up to him.

I have no idea what he means.

Well, the sticker is gone. The inspection remains. We’ll just have to get used to it, as we usually do whenever change is forced upon us.

Sen. John McCain wears two hats simultaneously.

The veteran Republican lawmaker is known as an occasional partisan crab. He also is a friend of the “liberal media” who happens to work well with Democrats.

This morning, appearing on “Face the Nation,” McCain was asked about a comment by presumed Democratic presidential campaign front runner Hillary Clinton who called McCain her “favorite Republican.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/07/mccain-on-being-clintons-favorite-republican-191582.html?hp=l5

McCain didn’t return the compliment. He said he’d work with a President Clinton if “regrettably” she gets elected. He wouldn’t take the bait offered by “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer.

Come on, senator.

Everyone who follows politics knows he worked quite well with then-Sen. Clinton when she served in that body from January 2001 until President Obama selected her to become secretary of state in 2009. Political junkies also are well-versed on McCain’s personal friendship with the current secretary of state, John Kerry, another former Democratic senator with whom McCain served. The two men are combat Navy veterans of the Vietnam War and they share that common bond.

McCain, though, has to play the die-hard Republican card because, as many of his GOP brethren have learned, the tea party wing of the GOP simply won’t stand for Republicans reaching across the aisle to their fellow Americans who happen to be Democrats.

I figure McCain will call Hillary Clinton eventually to tell her — in private, of course — that she is his favorite Democrat.

Buried deep in the story attached to this blog is an item that needs a quick response.

President Obama is coming to Texas this week to raise money for Democratic Party candidates, but he has no plans to visit the border region — the one that’s at the heart of an immigration crisis involving children and young adults.

Bad call, Mr. President. You should go there and see for yourself.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/211384-texas-dem-obama-one-step-behind-on-border-crisis

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the reason Obama is being invited is to enable local pols to play politics rather than deal with real challenges.

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from the border region, says the president has been a “step behind” in responding to the crisis involving a flood of immigrants coming to the United States from Central America. They’re fleeing drug lords, human traffickers and severe poverty.

Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, has invited the president to see the border for himself. The president is balking. Why? He doesn’t want to politicize this event?

Please. Presidents venture into crisis hot spots all the time. Yes, there’s a political element. There also is a chance for the president to lay eyes on a crisis, which well could energize him to push Homeland Security and Immigration and Naturalization Service staffers to find answers to deal with this flood of immigration.

Is all of this President Obama’s fault? Blame belongs to the nations from which these immigrants are fleeing: Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. I’ll say once again that Mexico, that vast country that sits between Central America and the U.S.’s southern border, also is culpable because it is allowing these young people clear transit through its territory to the United States.

I strongly encourage the president to complete his trip to Texas by visiting the border region. Take a look, Mr. President, and see with your own eyes what’s riled so many of your fellow Americans.

Admit it. When you’re not up to snuff the little things you normally let roll off your back annoy the daylights out of you.

Am I correct? Of course I am.

Allow me, then, this brief rant about how this kind of off-kilter feeling can get in the way of relationships.

I went to work Saturday but didn’t bring my “A game” to the job, which is to greet people courteously at the auto dealership where I spend about 25 hours each week. I did fine with the customers who came through.

My colleagues ticked me off. Repeatedly. They didn’t know it, although I did tell one of them about my sour mood. She understood, having been through them herself from time to time.

I cannot diagnose the cause of my crabbiness. It might been simply being unable to spend more time with our precious granddaughter who came with her parents to see us on a fairly impromptu visit over the Fourth of July weekend.

Then came this moment of pique that on a good day wouldn’t have bothered me in the least. Maybe there’s a cautionary tale here.

One of the sales staffers walked past me and said, “How’s it goin’?” I turned around quickly, but only saw him slip through the door and into the hallway.

What? Why didn’t he wait to hear my answer? Why, I never …

I vented my frustration at that moment to another colleague, who then looked at me as though I’d just grown another head. He didn’t get it. More likely he didn’t care.

Now that I’ve cooled off, I get that he didn’t care. On a better day I wouldn’t have cared much either.

I thought a few moments later about something my congressman, Mac Thornberry, once told me. He said he instructs his young staffers to exercise good manners when dealing with the public. Say “you’re welcome” when someone thanks you, he said, adding that he dislikes people who say “no problem” in response to a simple “thank you.” I agree with that.

He might add this instruction to his staff: When you ask someone “How’s it goin’? or “How you doin’?” stick around long enough to hear the answer.

There. Rant over.

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on impending retirement.

If I had known grandkids would be this much fun, I would have had them first.

You’ve seen that popular bumper sticker, I’m sure. Well, I mean no disrespect to the two sons we brought into the world many decades ago, but our little Emma Nicole is the living embodiment of that bumper-sticker cliché.

We’ve had a glorious evening entertaining this little pumpkin. She turns 16 months tomorrow. She’s walking, jabbering, teasing, laughing, mugging and is making us laugh hysterically at every little thing she says and does.

I am noting this only as a prelude to the retirement life my wife and I are anticipating in the not-too-distant future. It’s going to include some serious exposure to this little darling.

Emma lives in Allen — just north of Dallas — with her parents and two big brothers. We don’t get to see here much, at least not yet. It’s a six-hour drive each way, after all.

Emma surprised us with a visit this weekend. Well, actually it wasn’t a surprise to my wife and me. It was to her uncle, our older son, who didn’t know his brother, sister-in-law and niece were arriving for the Fourth of July weekend until they parked in front of our house. Our son was visiting us with his girlfriend and her daughters when Emma’s parents arrived.

We’ll be traveling soon to Allen with our fifth wheel to see our granddaughter once more. And this, too, is another element of retirement to which my wife and I are looking forward. It’ll be another one of those three-night excursions. We’ll drive to a state part, park our vehicle, hook it up and visit the family. It’ll include more quality time with Emma, for sure.

As we’ve played with Emma this evening, the thought occurred to me: At 16 months of age, does she realize yet that we are her grandparents? Or are we just two adults with whom she enjoys playing? She cannot communicate in a fool-proof way just yet what she’s thinking or feeling.

Still, I prefer to give her — and I suppose us and our daughter-in-law’s parents — the benefit of the doubt that she recognizes her grandparents when she sees them.

We’ll move closer to our cherished little Emma eventually.

For now I’ll settle for the joyous preview we’re getting to a whole new life awaiting us.

Political pundits have pounced all over Hillary Rodham Clinton’s money “troubles.”

Now we hear that the former secretary of state and U.S. senator has donated her sizable speaking fees to the Clinton Foundation set up to do good work around the world.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/211366-clinton-speaking-fees-have-been-donated

This will end the argument, right? Guess again.

Clinton’s budding presidential campaign — she’s going to run for the office in 2016, it now seems clear — has been hit by a couple of serious gaffes. She declared in a TV interview that she and her husband were “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2001, then turned around and bought themselves a pretty nice house in New York, where she was elected to serve in the U.S. Senate. Then she noted that she and Bill Clinton were “really well off” the way a lot of rich people were well off. Try explaining that to a voter who’s struggling to feed his or her family.

The chatterers have been all over her for those two missteps.

So now it comes out that for the past year she’s donated her six-figure speaking fees to the foundation.

This is all a quite clumsy rollout for a presidential campaign that no doubt will be a formidable machine once it gets cranked up.

OK, so let’s get past the money gossip and get down to brass tacks: How, Mme. Secretary, are you going to protect the United States of America against our enemies around the world?

Sam Rayburn, Big John Connally, Lyndon Johnson, John Nance Garner …

These guys used to symbolize the Texas Democratic Party. They were manly men, gruff, sometimes mean, usually profane and oh, so very effective at the art of politics.

Well, the party they once represented has given way to something quite different. Its key personalities this election year are two women: State Sens. Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte, the party nominees for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively.

http://www.panhandlepbs.org/blogs/state-news/2014/06/30/texas-democrats-rally-around-davis-van-de-putte/

Their party is rallying around them. Mr. Sam, Big John, LBJ and Cactus Jack all are gone.

As the Texas Tribune reports in the attached link, the state Democratic Party is hitching itself to the fortunes of these two pols.

Davis’s odds of being elected governor seem longer than Van de Putte’s chances of winning the No. 2 spot. But neither woman is shying away from a good fight against their respective opponents, Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick — who, I hasten to add, will give as good as they get from their Democratic foes.

The Texas Democratic Party has been wandering in the political wilderness since 1994, the last time anyone from that party held a statewide office in Texas. The last Democrat standing was former Comptroller John Sharp, who’s now the chancellor of the Texas A&M University system.

Will this be the year Democrats break through on the coattails of one of these women? It’s not likely, but the talk around the country is that Democrats at least might be able to make at least one of these races competitive.

I’ve noted before that single-party domination of the state’s political machinery — be it Democrat or Republican — breeds arrogance and indifference to the needs of those who don’t adhere to that party’s doctrine.

Will state Sens. Davis and Van de Putte make an actual contest out of their campaigns for the state’s top two elected offices?

One can hope.