Monthly Archives: May 2015

International news

Bipartisanship returns to Senate

corker and cardin

Take a look at this picture.

You see two U.S. senators — Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee and Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland — yukking it up after the Senate approved a measure to require senatorial review of the Iranian nuclear deal worked out by the Obama administration with the mullahs in Iran.

Why is this picture so noteworthy? It’s because the measure passed 98-1 in an overwhelmingly bipartisan manner.

It’s not often these days you see Democratic and Republican congressional leaders standing side by side in front of cameras to bask in something they’ve done together.

They did so this week.

Good for them.

What’s brought the smiles to both men? It’s a measure that says the Senate gets to sign off on a treaty that administration officials hope to finalize later this spring or perhaps in early summer. It calls for Iran to scale back dramatically its nuclear development program and its aim is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon — which Israel says it intends to do and which no one this side of Tehran wants to occur.

It’s good that the Senate and the House will weigh in when the time comes.

According to RealClearPolitics.com, “The legislation gives Congress 30 days to review a deal once the full details are submitted to them. They then have the right to approve or disapprove of the deal, or do nothing, which would allow it to go forward. If they disapprove, President Obama can veto that measure, which would require 67 votes to override and actually halt an agreement, an unlikely outcome.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/07/senate_nearly_unanimous_in_backing_review_of_iran_deal_126524.html

The lone “no” vote came from upstart freshman Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the author of that letter that GOP senators sent to the Iranian mullahs threatening to void any treaty that President Obama signs.

Well, that’s Cotton’s view.

I prefer to hope that the Senate will deliberate this treaty carefully when it arrives on Capitol Hill.

I also prefer that it do so in the same bipartisan spirit it showed in approving the measure granting its authority to do so.

Now the House of Representatives will consider it. Follow the Senate lead, House members.

national news, political news

Let's not quibble over use of 'thug'

1 Comment

Allow me this request.

How about stopping the quibbling and quarreling over the use of the term “thugs” to describe individuals who loot, pillage, burn and otherwise destroy other people’s property — not to mention injure or kill others — while rioting?

Dennis Prager, writing for RealClearPolitics.com, seems to think liberals have gotten thin-skinned about using the term. Liberals, according to Prager, seem to think it connotes someone’s race.

I consider myself a liberal thinker. I know other liberals, friends of mine. I’m unafraid to use the term. I mean nothing other than to describe the activity of the individual doing the misdeed. A thug is a thug. Period.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/05/why_the_left_wont_call_rioters_thugs_126496.html

It doesn’t. Honest. The term covers many aspects of misbehavior. If you mug someone on the street, you’re a thug. If you like to fight others just to prove your manhood, you’re a thug. When I was growing up, if you “TP’d” someone’s house with toilet paper, you were a thug; these days, such activity is considered a compliment if you’re a teenager.

This notion that the rioters who destroyed businesses in Baltimore and other communities of late were labeled “thugs” because of their race is ridiculous on its face.

A team wins the World Series or the Super Bowl or the NBA championship. Fans who live in the city of the winning team are so delirious they storm the streets, turn over cars, light them on fire. Last time I witnessed one of these events on TV, I noticed a lot of white folks among them. They’re thugs, too.

Thuggish behavior knows no racial boundary.

 

Sports news

Deflate-gate non-story re-emerges

Count me as someone who believes the New England Patriots’ “deflate-gate” story is, well, a non-story.

You also can count me as someone who doesn’t believe all-world quarterback Tom Brady should face any serious punishment for what he might have known about the balls that were deflated prior to the Patriots’ blowout win over the Indianapolis Colts in last year’s AFC championship football game.

http://espn.go.com/boston/nfl/story/_/id/12839315/tom-brady-agent-says-wells-report-significant-terrible-disappointment

The NFL lawyer who looked into this mess has determined that head coach Bill Belichick didn’t know anything about the balls. Nor did team owner Robert Kraft.

Brady, on the other hand, “probably” knew that some hanky-panky was going on with the balls, that someone was letting some of the air out of them to make them easier to catch and handle.

Probably knew?

That’s proof of anything? Hardly.

The only way this matter becomes relevant to anything is if the Patriots had won the game on a last-second hail Mary pass that Brady would have thrown to a receiver who couldn’t have held on to a properly inflated football.

That didn’t happen. The Patriots blew the Colts away. As someone once wrote, the Patriots would have won playing with beach balls.

I won’t get into the nuts and bolts of whether Brady should be suspended or fined or both.

Whatever happened to those footballs prior to the AFC championship game had no bearing on the outcome.

There. End of story? Oh, probably not.

political news

Mike Huckabee: closet liberal

Bill Press is a Democratic Party operative and commentator. He once co-hosted “Crossfire” on CNN and he’s been sort of a progressive/liberal TV talking head for many years.

He posted this item on Facebook that I have to share on this blog. It seems to be quite revealing.

***

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee announced he’s running for president yesterday, the sixth Republican to do so.

Now, here’s what’s funny: As a presidential candidate, he may talk about his time as FOX NEWS talk show host, but he won’t talk about his time as governor. He can’t. Because today he’s running as a conservative – but, back then, he governed as a liberal!

As Igor Volsky from Think Progress told us on the show yesterday, Governor Huckabee had a record which Bill Clinton, another Arkansas governor, would have been proud of.

One of his first acts as governor was to raise the sales tax to pay for improvements in schools. He also convinced voters to raise taxes to pay for improvements to Arkansas highways. As governor, he supported in-state tuition and scholarships for students who came to this country illegally.

Like President Obama, Huckabee’s signature achievement was health care. He expanded health coverage to kids whose parents earned too much to qualify for Medicaid but still couldn’t afford private insurance – and the number of uninsured children dropped from 22 percent to 6 percent.

As Governor, Mike Huckabee built a strong, progressive, pro-government record. Too bad he can’t run on it today.

***

That’s quite a record. Gov. Huckabee ought re-own it.

local news, political news

Early votes are in: Turnout looks so-so

The early votes have been tabulated for the upcoming Amarillo City Council election.

The numbers do not bode well for a barn-burning turnout. Officials say 7,992 votes were cast early.

Let’s do some math here.

The city is home to roughly 90,000 people who are eligible to vote, give or take. That means about 8 percent of the total voting population has cast ballots. The question now becomes: How many more will do their civic duty on Saturday, aka Election Day?

My experience with early voting — and I don’t believe in voting early if I don’t have to — I that it means only that more people vote early. Fewer of them vote on the actual Election Day. It hasn’t boosted turnout by itself.

My friend Chris Hays, general manager of Panhandle PBS, put together a great video promoting the need to vote. I’ve posted it once already on this blog. Here it is again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jJQeEQH6pc

The election has been contentious at times. It has featured some serious accusations of poor prior public service performance. Challengers to the incumbents have said the city is too secretive about its plans for downtown’s revival; incumbents have answered that the city has made downtown redevelopment plans available for public review.

There’s an element of folks in the city who want to see a wholesale rejection of the incumbents who are seeking re-election; four of the five are on the ballot.

Local media have published plenty of letters and guest columns hyping candidates and causes.

I hope for a big turnout on Saturday, right along with everyone else.

That ol’ trick knee of mine, though, tells me it’s going to fall a good bit short of what we all should want: greater — if not full — participation in representative democracy.

State news

Anti-sodomy law still on the books? Get rid of it!

I just learned something today that I probably should have known already.

It’s that a law banning sodomy in Texas remains on the books, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state’s anti-sodomy law to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Let me stipulate here that I am not comfortable writing about sex, so I’ll be discreet.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/06/house-committee-takes-hate-crimes-anti-sodomy-law/

The anti-sodomy law was a vestige of the state’s prejudice against homosexual behavior. It banned same-sex intimacy. The Supreme Court then stepped in and said the state cannot ban such behavior, given that what two people do in the privacy of their home is, well, no one’s business but their own.

I thought the court’s striking down of the law meant the end of it. The state couldn’t enforce an unconstitutional law. Silly me. I was wrong.

The Texas Tribune reports that Texas isn’t alone among the states that still have anti-sodomy laws on the books. Eleven other states have these outdated laws.

They all should be repealed.

I find it incredibly hypocritical for legislators who contend that government shouldn’t interfere in people’s lives to retain a law that interferes in the most intrusive manner imaginable.

The highest court in the country ruled in 2003 that states could not punish people for engaging in same-sex intercourse, as Texas did.

The Legislature needs to finish off this law once and for all. Time’s wasting, ladies and gentlemen.

 

State news

Nice to be wrong about a government program

Government, whether at the federal or state level, usually becomes the target for critics.

Most of the criticism is earned. Government often isn’t our friend. It’s inefficient. It hinders us in some way — or so much of the criticism goes.

I’m going to say something good about a state government idea that went into effect this past March.

Texas no longer issues windshield stickers telling the police that your car has passed a safety inspection.

I had my doubts about how this new program would work. Those doubts have been eliminated. I managed to get my big ol’ beast of a pickup’s auto registration renewed right along with a state inspection. No hassle at all.

The idea was to eliminate the printing of those stickers that used to go on the inside of your windshield. The state figures to save about $2 million annually by not having to print the stickers. Is that a lot of money in a multibillion-dollar annual budget? No. But, heck, a couple million bucks isn’t exactly walking-around money.

The new rules are pretty simple.

Within 90 days of your motor vehicle registration expiration, you get your vehicle inspected. Once approved, the inspection station attendant removes the sticker and gives you a receipt. You present your receipt to the tax assessor-collector clerk when you renew your auto registration. You then get your auto registration, which goes on your windshield all by itself. And, yes, you still have to provide proof of insurance when you get your vehicle inspected.

It’s easy.

What’s more, it saves the state a few bucks.

What can be wrong with that? Nothing, I tell ya. Nothing.

Uncategorized

V-E Day still resonates 70 years later

v-e-day-snapshot2

Seventy years ago a huge chapter in the world’s greatest armed conflict came to a close.

The Red Army reached Berlin on its march from what was then known as the Soviet Union. It had beaten back the Third Reich and in a race to the German capital city with the force led by American and British troops advancing from the west, they crossed the “finish line.”

They accepted the Germans’ surrender and the war in Europe came to a close.

It’s called Victory in Europe Day. V-E Day.

The millions of men from allied nations performed acts of heroism against the Nazi war machine that cannot be forgotten.

Those men are all old now. They’re in their late 80s and 90s. They’re dying by the thousands daily. Those who remain — be they American, British, French, Russian or from any of the nations allied in the fight against tyranny — deserve our eternal gratitude.

It’s been said in the seven decades since the surrender that our side — the Americans and Brits — should have gotten to Berlin first.

But the Red Army got the jump on the American-led forces advancing from Normandy. They turned back the Nazis at Stalingrad in winter of 1942-43. Our forces wouldn’t land on the French coast until June 6, 1944. By the time our men slogged ashore, the Red Army had begun its advance on Germany.

As it turned out, the Soviets were able to claim Berlin as their captured capital and the carving up of Germany into western and eastern regions — independent of each other, with the east being controlled by the communists in Moscow — would become a source of tension that helped trigger a Cold War that lasted until 1991.

But the struggle that engulfed Europe had come to an end. There would be smaller conflicts that flared immediately after World War II. Greece fought a civil war between royalists and communists. Hungary would erupt in rebellion against the Soviets in 1956. Czechoslovakia would do the same in 1968.

But on May 7, 1945 — with Adolf Hitler dead in his bunker under the ruins of his city — the good guys defeated the 20th century’s most evil tyranny.

World War II wouldn’t end until September 1945. We still had another enemy to fight in the Pacific. The European fight, though, was over.

The task of rebuilding a shattered continent would begin.

 

 

medical news, State news

Abstinence prevents STDs, but only if kids cooperate

1 Comment

Hey, wait a minute!

Abstaining from sexual activity is supposed to be the only fool-proof method of preventing sexually transmitted disease. Isn’t that right?

And when school systems place a heavy insistence on abstinence in their sex education curriculum, then the occurrence of STDs is supposed to decline, if not disappear. Isn’t that also correct?

What’s going on with the Crane Independent School District in West Texas, which — despite its heavy emphasis on abstinence — has seen a spike in cases of chlamydia at its high school campus?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/abstinence-only-texas-high-school-hit-by-chlamydia-outbreak/ar-BBjf9nM

Oh, I almost forgot. We’re dealing with teenagers, who — and I was one of them myself — quite often don’t heed their elders’ good advice.

You tell ’em not to do something and they, um, do it anyway.

Sex is an overpowering magnet for hormonally charged-up youngsters.

“Honestly this happens in any town,” said Diana Martinez, a Crane ISD parent. “Parents need to be aware of the situation and make sure they tell their kids to be safe and practice safe sex.”

Sure enough, it does.

And parents need to take responsibility for telling their children to behave and to teach them about the difficulties of coming of age at a time when certain unsafe practices can endanger their health.

However, parents also turn their children over to public school systems for many hours during the day. It’s also incumbent on educators to drive home the points about such things as safe sex in addition to abstaining from sex altogether.

Anyone who’s ever been a parent also has been a teenager. There should be little need to remind grownups all around the world that teens do things against the wishes of those who care for them — be they parents or teachers.

political news, State news

Be on guard, Texas lawmakers

What? You mean the Texas Legislature has members who behave badly when no one’s looking?

Well, I’ll be dipped in sesame seeds. Who knew?

It now appears that a group calling itself the American Phoenix Foundation is going to release some secret video it says captures lawmakers doing things they shouldn’t be doing.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/05/lawmakers-filmed-secret-recordings/?mc_cid=d5b6bd6410&mc_eid=c01508274f

This could be interesting. It also could get some of these operatives into some serious trouble.

The group is a conservative outfit that in the past has targeted liberal politicians associated with liberal causes, such as ACORN. It’s been accused of smearing politicians and using “selective editing” techniques to make the subject of the video and/or audio seem even worse, according to the Texas Tribune.

State Rep. Pete Geren, R-Fort Worth, put the American Phoenix Foundation’s status into perspective. He said one of the individuals filming lawmakers “appeared to be a stalker” and added, “There are some sleazebags in politics, and these guys are going to fall right in that bracket.”

So, the American Phoenix Foundation is going to employ sleazy tactics to uncover sleazy behavior.

Is this an ends-justifying-the-means kind of tactic?

Here’s an interesting wrinkle to the story. John Beria, a spokesman for the foundation, said the group plans to target conservatives and liberals equally.

According to the Tribune, “Beria said there was no ideological bias in its months-long undercover operation in Austin, and he said some of the most interesting findings center on conservative Republicans who act one way at home and quite another in the state capital.”

We’ll see.