Monthly Archives: May 2015

political news

Why the fixation with The Donald?

Why, media? Why?

Why do you — and I guess, me — keep writing about Donald Trump in the context of a presidential campaign?

The Donald isn’t going to run for president of the United States. Not this time, not ever.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/21/megyn-kelly-donald-trump_n_7350412.html?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000078&utm_source=thinkprogress.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pubexchange_facebook

How do I know this? Well, I don’t know it. I just feel it in my bones.

The man’s got that TV show that earns him lots of money. That’s what he appears to be about, anyhow. Money. He boasts about how much of it he has. He’s not shy about flaunting his wealth. For the life of me I don’t understand why some people don’t take extreme offense at his self-aggrandizing.

But he does.

He’s made a complete ass of himself during the entire Obama presidency questioning whether the president is constitutionally eligible to hold the office to which he was elected and re-elected. He continues to act the part of buffoon and clown.

But now he’s saying he’s going to announce his candidacy sometime in June? That’s what he told Megyn Kelly.

I will not hold my breath waiting for that announcement.

It’s not going to come.

Then again, if it does … well, the fun will really begin as the Republicans start searching for their 2016 presidential nominee.

 

International news, military news

Say 'no' to U.S. ground troops in Iraq

Americans have been down this road already.

We invaded a sovereign nation. Tossed out its leader. Captured him. Tried and convicted him. Then we executed him.

Americans sought to help rebuild a government in our image, with mixed results.

All the while, nearly 5,000 of our young men and women died seeking to make Iraq a beacon of freedom and light in the Middle East.

Then we pulled out.

Obama: US not losing war against ISIS

Do we need to go back into a country and put “boots on the ground” in an effort to defeat the Islamic State, which wants to claim Iraq as its own?

No. Why? The country has no more stomach for additional loss of American life. We do not want to expend one more young life in a country into which we never should have entered in the first place.

President Obama says the United States is “not losing the war” against the Islamic State. He acknowledges “tactical setbacks” with ISIL’s taking of Ramadi, a key Iraqi city. But the air campaign will continue. We’ll continue to train Iraqi soldiers to fight the enemy on the ground. We’ll continue to provide intelligence to hunt down and kill ISIL leaders when and where we find them.

This fight continues to look as though it will take a long time to conclude. That, I submit, is the very nature of this new kind of “world war” in which we’re engaged.

Do we put our troops back onto the battlefield once again? No way.

 

local news

Not complaining about the rain

As a boy, the rain drove me batty.

I grew up in the dank, damp and sometimes dreary Pacific Northwest, where it rains three or four days before you ever notice it.

Now that I’m older and now that my wife, one of our sons and I live in this so-called semi-arid region I refer to as the Texas Tundra, you won’t hear me complain about the rain we’ve been getting of late.

More of it is falling tonight. Even more of it is expected through Friday and perhaps over the weekend.

You won’t hear me gripe. Nope. Not me.

I know the sun will return in due course, just as I (more or less) knew we’d get the rain we’ve all sought through prayer.

These things run in cycles.

Our playas are full. McDonald Lake — which is just about a mile north of us on Coulter, is practically overflowing. I saw some video of fish that had ended up on the street next to the lake. Now that’s weird.

The closest thing to a gripe I’ve heard has come from cotton farmers who need to start planting their crops, but cannot do it because the ground is too wet.

Be patient, folks. The sun will return.

Oh, and the drought? It’s still with us.

I’ll guess that Amarillo’s daily water use gauge is down … considerably. That, too, is a good thing.

political news

Fox, CNN get it right on debate format

The Republican Party’s presidential field figures to be a thundering herd by the time summer rolls around.

Accordingly, two cable news networks have decided on a format that is going to exclude some of this potentially huge field.

Good for them. The networks, that is.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/20/fox_cnn_set_criteria_for_gop_debates.html

Fox News Channel is going to play host to the first GOP primary debate on Aug. 6 in Cleveland. Its plan is to limit the participants to the top 10 candidates, based on their standing in the polls at that time. There well might be at least double that number of candidates seeking the party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

Fox says the candidates must be declared. Many observers are noting that the criteria are going to keep several high-powered candidates off the debate stage.

CNN is going to play host for the second debate, on Sept. 16, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Its format is a bit more convoluted. CNN is planning a two-tiered event: The top candidates will share one stage; the also-rans will share another one.

I prefer the Fox approach, to be honest.

There is no possible way that having 20 — or maybe more — candidates on the same stage is going to do a bit of good for the voters who might be undecided on who would get their vote in a Republican primary. Fox has taken a simpler approach to determining which candidates should participate in the first of what looks like a long series of joint appearances.

My only hope for the debate formats as the series unfolds is that the networks somehow restrict audience cheering. The 2012 GOP debates were annoying in the extreme as the candidates paraded onto debate stages, waving to their cheering fans in the crowd. It was weird and in my view detracted from the importance of the event, which was to ask these candidates for their views on critical issues of the day.

But for starters, I’m glad to know Fox and CNN are going to cull the herd of hopefuls from a debate stage with limited space.

local news

City Council off to 'rocky' start? Maybe, maybe not

The headline in the Amarillo Globe-News this week referred to the city’s “Road to change” embarking on a “rocky start.”

We’ll see about that. But the story below the headline does portend a possible change in the longstanding dynamic that has driven city government — which has been a desire for unanimity.

Place 1 Councilman Elisha Demerson had just taken the oath of office and then, during a work session, he wanted to delay a vote on the appointment of a part-time associate municipal judge. Why? He wanted to await the results of the June 13 runoff election in Place 4 between Steve Rogers and Mark Nair.

The City Council hasn’t always been an amen chorus on every single issue. The late Place 4 Councilman Jim Simms was known to offer a dissent or three when he felt strongly about something; if memory serves, he opposed the city’s ordinance banning texting while driving. And way before Simms joined the body, it had the late Commissioner Dianne Bosch offering dissents, such as whether the city should sell its public hospital or whether it should impose a curfew on teenagers younger than 17 years of age.

Of late, though, the council has sought to speak with a single voice.

That a new guy, Demerson, would seek to stall a routine appointment does seem to suggest there will be fewer 5-0 votes on issues in the future than we’ve seen in the recent past.

That could result in some actual public discussion and debate. Hey, maybe some tempers might flare.

 

State news

Local control? It's a goner in Texas

My head is spinning.

I remember a time when Democrats were considered the party of “big, intrusive, patronizing government.” The bigger the government entity, the wiser were the decisions that came down, or so it went.

While the Democrats were gathering under the banner of Big Brother, Republicans were the champions of local control. Get “big gub’mint” off the backs of the locals, they said. Let the decisions come from city halls and county courthouses.

So …

What’s just happened in Austin?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed House Bill 40, which bans cities from prohibiting the practice of “fracking,” which is shorthand for “hydraulic fracturing,” the use of water to break loose oil from hard-to-get places underground.

http://www.dentonrc.com/local-news/local-news-headlines/20150518-hb-40-gets-abbotts-approval.ece

Abbott is a proud Republican. But wait! He and his colleagues in Austin aren’t allowing cities to decide for themselves what’s best for their communities, their residents, their constituents. He wants the state to handle these decisions.

Isn’t that employing the heavy hand of government on us little folks?

HB 40 is in reaction to the city of Denton’s decision to ban fracking inside its city limits. No can do, the Legislature said. Abbott agreed and he signed the bill into law, which takes effect immediately.

“HB 40 does a profound job of helping to protect private property rights here in the state of Texas, ensuring those who own their own property will not have the heavy hand of local regulation deprive them of their rights,” Abbott said in a news release.

The “heavy hand of local regulation”? Hey, the locals know best, don’t they?

Fracking has its critics. They contend it is environmentally dangerous. It destabilizes the bedrock. It consumes a lot of water that — if you’ll remember — is in short supply these days. Yes, it’s also an effective way to extract fossil fuel from the ground.

Back to my original point: The whole notion of our political system’s basic party principles relating to big and small government has been turned on its ear.

I hope my head stops spinning.

 

national news

Obama finds friends in GOP

Republicans have made it their mission — a lot of them, anyhow — to trash Barack Obama as some sort of wacked-out Marxist/socialist who is intent on the destruction of the country that elected him as president of the United States.

So, what does the president do? He locks arms with Republican members of Congress and decides it’s really all right to support a free-trade agreement with a dozen Asian nations — which runs counter to where the base of his Democratic Party stands, or so it appears.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/trade-bill-clears-senate-hurdle-118178.html?hp=t4_r

The GOP-led Senate has just shut down a filibuster that had stalled the fast-track legislation to get the free trade agreement approved and sent to the president’s desk.

Obama’s major allies in this deal happen to Republicans. The Senate was acting chaotically as senators scrambled between discussion groups to hammer out some kind of deal.

What’s up with that?

I happen to believe in a freer trade than what we’ve had for so long. The world is shrinking and nations or even continents no longer can shield themselves from influences of other nations and continents.

So the free trade agreement likely now will get approved. It will end up on the president’s desk. He’ll sign it.

I’m hoping to see a lot of Republican lawmakers — along with centrist/moderate Democrats — standing with the president when he puts pen to paper.

It’s a scene we haven’t witnessed too much during the Obama administration, but which used to be a regular occurrence during the past presidencies of, say, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Government works better when both parties can find common ground. So help me, it works almost all the time.

 

 

national news, political news

Fibs = lies? Sometimes

Someone asked me the other day if I could explain the difference between a “fib” and a “lie.”

My quick answer to him was that I “like the word ‘fib’ better.”

“Fib” has a less-damaging ring to it than “lie.”

I’ve given some further thought to the question, which actually is a pretty good one.

Here’s my more thoughtful answer: A fib is meant to describe a false statement that doesn’t carry as much consequence as a lie.

I used the term “fib” to describe, in this latest instance, what NBC reporter/news anchor Brian Williams had said about being shot down in Iraq. He fibbed about it. He wasn’t shot down. He was riding in a helicopter that accompanied the ship that actually was shot down.

Why is that a “fib” and not a “lie”? Because all it means is that one man’s career is likely ruined. The rest of us will carry on.

What, then, constitutes a lie?

Let’s try this one: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” That came from President Bill Clinton as he wagged his finger at the American public and told a lie about what he did with the White House intern. All by itself, that shouldn’t constitute a lie. Except that the result of that untrue statement — which he also made to a federal grand jury — resulted in his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives.

I suppose I could go on with more actual lies, such as when the Bush administration kept telling us about Saddam Hussein’s alleged complicity in the 9/11 attacks. We all know where those lies led us.

It’s one thing to fib about a personal experience and another thing to lie when it involves the future of the country.

Awww, what the heck. I still like the sound of the word “fib” better.

 

political news

Yes, polls do matter to pols

Politicians are known to stretch the truth, fib a little and, yes, even lie through their teeth.

One of the greatest lies politicians tell us is that “Polls don’t matter.”

Uh, yes they do.

Obama’s favorability rating ticks higher

The Gallup Organization has released some new polling data that show President Obama’s approval rating among voters is at 53 percent. That’s not great, but it’s a lot better than where it was, say, a year or two ago.

His overall poll standing — taking averages of all the major surveys — is around 46 percent. Still not great, but not bad, either, for a second-term president heading toward the finish line.

Politicians who say “Polls don’t matter” usually say those things when they’re trailing in a campaign against the other individual. They make those statements as if to dismiss the bad news they’re getting from their hired guns. The other candidate, the one who’s leading? Why he or she thinks polls are great. They use those numbers as affirmation of the job they’re doing trying to sell whatever snake oil they’re peddling.

I’ve long ago dismissed the notion of politicians saying they “pay no attention to polls” when they’re pondering key policy decisions. My definition, politicians who want to keep doing their public service jobs, rely on voters’ views on the job they’re doing.

So, that means they must take note of what the polling data are showing.

I wish I could be a fly on the wall of the White House right now, listening to what Barack Obama is saying about the polling data. Sure, he’ll tell us he’s doing “what’s right for the country.”

He’s also doing what’s right for his standing in those polls.

 

local news

Will the City Council operate the same?

I wish I had been at City Hall this week to watch the swearing in of the new Amarillo City Council.

Then I could have seen up close how the new council is going to conduct its meetings.

Two new members took office Tuesday: Elisha Demerson in Place 1 and Randy Burkett in Place 3. The Place 4 seat will be filled by either Mark Nair or Steve Rogers, who are competing in a June 13 runoff.

Why the curiosity about the conduct of the council?

Well, Mayor Paul Harpole is returning for another two-year term. He has adopted the same formula used by previous mayors who have presided over these meetings. It’s a fascinating spectacle and if you’re in the right frame of mind when you watch it, you actually can be amused by the way the council breezes through its process of approving measures.

It goes like this: After a discussion, the mayor calls for a motion to approve. Starting usually from the far right end of the dais, the council member says “so moved.” The council member in the next chair seconds the motion. The mayor calls for a discussion. Hearing none, he calls for the vote. “All approved say ‘aye.’ All opposed say ‘no.'” It’s approved.

The second motion to approve comes from the person next to the one who made the first motion; the second then comes from the next council member. The mayor goes through the same drill. Measure approved.

And on it goes.

It’s kind of like clockwork.

I remember one time when Debra McCartt was new to the then-City Commission. She got confused about whether it was her turn to make the motion to approve an ordinance. “Is it my turn?” she asked then-Mayor Trent Sisemore. “Yes,” he said. She made the motion and all was good.

The two new council members — Demerson and Burkett — both promised “change” was coming to the council. I’m betting the third new guy, whoever it is, will echo that theme.

I’ll be waiting to see if the change upsets the normally well-oiled process that drives the City Council to quick decisions.