Monthly Archives: June 2015

national news, political news

Caitlyn Jenner still a Republican

The woman formerly known as Bruce Jenner once declared himself to be a Republican.

Now that Bruce has become Caitlyn Jenner, at least one Republican presidential contender said Caitlyn is “welcome in my Republican Party.”

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham has rolled out the welcome mat for Caitlyn Jenner, declaring that the GOP is a big tent party after all.

Lindsey Graham: Caitlyn Jenner Is “Welcome” in My Republican Party

I’m totally fine with Sen. Graham’s statement. He’s right, of course. A political party should be a place where people judge others’ most intensely intimate personal decisions. I struggle to think of a decision that is more intimate than changing one’s gender, which is what Jenner has done.

Graham said Jenner is welcome in “my” party. The question among some of us watching this campaign unfold is whether the party really belongs to those such as Graham, who’s known to be a more inclusive sort of politician.

It’s the “base” of the GOP that’s calling the shots. Something tells me the party base isn’t quite so welcoming to Caitlyn Jenner.

 

International news, military news

No ‘complete strategy’ against Islamic State?

President Barack Obama landed in Germany and then dropped this startling admission on the laps of the worldwide media.

“We don’t yet have a complete strategy,” the president said in describing the U.S.-led effort to fight the Islamic State.

I make no apologies for my support of President Obama, but this one floors me.

Nine months into the campaign to defeat ISIL, the president today acknowledged that he’s been winging it.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/244272-obama-we-dont-yet-have-a-compete-strategy-against-isis

My advice to the president — are you paying attention, young man? — is that you need to finish working on that strategy in a serious hurry.

I don’t believe you need to mobilize The Big Red One, or the Screaming Eagles, or a Marine division to — pardon that hideous euphemism — put “boots on the ground.”

But there needs to be a “complete strategy” to fight these monstrous terrorists.

The president is in Germany attending the G-7 summit and has pledged to speed up training and arming of Iraqi forces, which have been all but cowering in the face of ISIL advances on major cities and military installations. Yes, the Iraqi military has made some gains in recent days, but they keep getting pushed back.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter recently said the Iraqis lack the “will to fight” ISIL. They’d better find the will if they intend to defend their own country.

As for the complete strategy that the president said is coming, time is not our friend.

Let’s get busy.

 

national news, political news

The Donald calls this man a ‘clown’?

Words fail me.

Donald Trump has called out one of the smartest commentators/pundits on television, calling him a “clown.”

Dr. Charles Krauthammer was the target of The Donald’s vitriol. Why? Because the commentator had the bad taste to point out that Trump’s poll standing is in the toilet (although he didn’t use that term; it’s mine).

Trump hits back at ‘dummy’ Fox News pundit

Trump called Krauthammer a “dummy” and maybe a few other unprintable words as well.

The Donald is talking about running for the Republican presidential nomination next year. I don’t think he’s seriously considering such a thing.

Krauthammer is one of Fox News’s go-to guys on the political commentary desk. Do I agree with Krauthammer? Hardly ever. But, man, the guy’s smart.

I should remind you here that Krauthammer once was a medical doctor. He worked as a psychiatrist. I don’t believe “clowns” and “dummies” get medical degrees from reputable universities, as Dr. Krauthammer did.

The real clown here is Donald Trump, a self-absorbed egomaniac with absolutely no sense of self-awareness.

He’s a smart businessman — I reckon. But business smarts do not translate to political smarts — which The Donald demonstrates every time he opens his trap.

 

State news

Now it’s a McKinney, Texas, cop under fire

1 Comment

Oh, brother. Here we go … again.

A McKinney police officer has been suspended after he roughed up some unarmed juveniles at a swim party in the suburban community north of Dallas.

It’s been caught on video. It’s made the rounds. Gone viral, in fact.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Officer-suspended-after-video-shows-violent-6312510.php

The video shows the officer detaining kids at the swim party. At one point, he forces — and this is quite interesting — a bikini-clad girl to the ground; when the girl gets up, the officer pulls his service revolver out of its holster, then puts the gun away after several seconds.

Yep, it’s fair to wonder out loud: Did the officer actually think the girl was packing heat wearing, um, a bikini? He ended up putting his knees on the girl’s back, restraining her while waiting for backup to arrive.

Here’s where I ought to mention that the officer is white, almost all the kids are black.

One of the girls involved in the disturbance is heard to yell at the officer that he “isn’t going to be a cop no more.” There were other terrible things said in the melee, including an apparently racist rant from an adult bystander.

The resolution of this incident has all the earmarks of another ugly chapter being written.

International news

Marking the end of a life-changing journey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLgdb6r0MQ4

Sixty-five years of living has brought me many blessings … and the occasional curse.

I want to mark one of those blessings with this blog post.

Six years ago today, I bid so long to four young people with whom I’d spent four marvelous weeks in the Holy Land. We were there as part of a Rotary International Group Study Exchange. I am a member of Rotary and I had the high honor of accompanying these four individuals to Israel.

The link I’ve attached to this blog gives you a slight hint of what we experienced. We went to many of the locations noted on the video.

But this post really isn’t about that. It’s more about them, my dear friends, who traveled with me the entire length and breadth of one of the world’s most fascinating countries.

Aida, Fernando, Shirley and Katt all hail from West Texas. One of them has moved to Dallas, but we stay in touch. We all do. They’ve become four of my best friends.

The GSE is designed to acquaint young professionals with colleagues abroad. It’s also designed to recruit young Rotary members, to keep the service organization alive and vibrant.

Our journey began at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport on May 9, 2009. It ended on June 7, 2009 when we bid adieu to three of our team members at David Ben-Gurion International Airport. One of them stayed behind in Tel Aviv.

We’d laughed and cried together. We enjoyed sumptuous food. Prayed together on the Mount of Olives. We stayed in Israeli hosts’ homes, met their families and were treated to sights and sounds the usual tourist doesn’t get to see.

We peered into Gaza, stood on the Golan Heights, and swam in the Red Sea, the Dead Sea and the “Med” Sea.

We walked where Jesus walked in Jerusalem and where he preached near Galilee. We toured churches, synagogues and mosques.

I cannot possibly list all of what we saw, heard and felt.

We made new friends with members of another GSE team from The Netherlands that traveled through Israel with us. I’m still in touch with a couple of that team’s members.

It was one of those life experiences that you just cannot quantify. You can’t put a price on what one learns on a journey such as that.

I was delighted to have taken that journey with those four young people.

My time in Israel didn’t end at Ben-Gurion airport. I stayed on another week with my wife, who’d flown over to join me. We acted like typical tourists, staying at a B&B in Jerusalem. I got to show her some of what I’d experienced.

Would we return to Israel? In a heartbeat.

 

 

national news, political news

Imagine LBJ and HHH hugging like that

BarackandJoe

Take a good look at this picture. It shows two grown men, both of whom occupy the two highest public offices in the most powerful nation on Earth, embracing in a time of profound grief.

What’s not been commented on much in the media is what happened shortly after this picture was snapped. Vice President Joe Biden kissed President Barack Obama on the cheek; the president then returned the gesture by kissing the vice president on his cheek.

The event, of course, was at the funeral of the vice president’s son, Beau, who died this past week of brain cancer.

The president offered a touching eulogy while honoring the memory of his friend’s son.

Let’s set politics aside for a moment and look briefly at what this picture symbolizes.

As the link below notes, it symbolizes the extraordinarily close relationship these two men have for each other.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/in-sorrow-obama-and-biden-put-personal-bond-on-public-display/ar-BBkNdEb

It hasn’t always been that way between presidents and vice presidents. Try to imagine Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew embracing like that. Or Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. Or John Kennedy and LBJ, for that matter. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush? Hah!

Actually, I could see Bill Clinton hugging Al Gore, and George W. Bush doing the same for Dick Cheney — although a part of me wonders whether Cheney would return the embrace.

Historians have written how LBJ would summon the vice president for a meeting — while the president was sitting on the commode!

Obama and Biden, as the article notes, came from vastly different backgrounds. They competed against each other for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Biden dropped out and then Obama picked him as his running mate — and has given him substantial responsibility during the nearly two terms the men have served together.

Let’s be clear: The picture on this blog post doesn’t tell the whole story. Perhaps they’ve had their differences in private. The vice president is known — at times — to

let his mouth engage prematurely, sometimes to the chagrin of the president.

However, when you’re the president of the United States and you pick someone to serve as the No. 2 individual in your administration, you want to forge a relationship that’s built on mutual respect.

It doesn’t hurt if there’s actual affection involved as well.

 

 

 

 

 

State news, Uncategorized

Another PR bombshell falls on City Hall

It’s becoming almost like a trivia game down at Seventh Avenue and Buchanan Street in downtown Amarillo.

Which public-relations nightmare has caused the most sleepless nights for senior city administrators and council members?

Is it the revelation that the police department withheld from the public that a rapist was running loose?

How about the tempest over the way animal control officers were disposing of unwanted or abandoned pets?

What about the hiring of a traffic engineer who, it turns, out had been under investigation for alleged misdeeds at his prior place of employment?

Let’s add the latest SNAFU to the list. It involves water bills sent the other day to about 12,000 residential customers in southwest Amarillo that, to be charitable, didn’t accurately reflect actual water usage. Utility customers who normally pay about $55 per month for water and sewer use received bills, in some cases, of more than $300.

In the interest of full disclosure, my water bill was not among those affected by the serious misfire.

The city fired eight of its 11 water meter readers on the same day, creating a situation that made it impossible for utility employees to read all the meters, forcing the city to “estimate” water use; residents became furious with the size of their water bills.

This is the best part: The week the water bills went out, the phones went on the fritz at City Hall, meaning residents couldn’t call in to register their concerns or ask questions about their sky-high water bills. Some residents are quoted in the media as believing the phone mess-up was not a coincidence. How does the city persuade an irate constituent that it was?

Wow! I almost don’t know what to say about this.

And on top of all that, we hear from the city’s official spokeswoman, who said: “You know, sometimes when you’ve got someone on the other line going, ‘I need answers!’ you’re just going to make up an answer.”

Holy crap! That is precisely the kind of thing you might think to yourself, or whisper to your colleagues, but you damn sure don’t say such a thing out loud … to the public.

To paraphrase the famed astronaut Jim Lovell: Amarillo, we’ve got a problem.

 

national news, political news

Sex takes center stage in Hastert drama

Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News — no fan of conservatives, to be sure — has identified, I think, the reason that sex has become the No. 1 media issue in the Dennis Hastert controversy/scandal.

Hastert, the former speaker of the U.S. House, has been indicted on a felony charge of making illegal hush money payments to someone.

It’s the reason for the hush money that’s become the focus here, not the charges spelled out in the indictment, according to Carlson.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-04/hastert-joins-crowded-ranks-of-fallen-moralists

Hastert allegedly sexually abused at least one young man when he was a teacher and coach in Yorkville, Ill. There could be more, the late victim’s sister alleges.

Why the keen interest?

It’s the context of how Hastert became speaker of the House.

He succeeded a serial adulterer, Newt Gingrich, who had to quit his position after admitting to an affair with a staffer — all while he was ranting, raving and railing against President Clinton’s indiscretions with a White House intern.

Then came Bob Livingston, another Republican from Louisiana. Livingston was supposed to succeed Gingrich as speaker. Oops! He, too, fooled around with women other than his wife. Multiple times. One of his paramours was a lobbyist. He was out.

The House then looked for a Boy Scout, a man whose reputation was beyond reproach. Poof! There was Hastert. Hey, he’s as clean as they get.

Except that he wasn’t.

Hastert didn’t make a big show of his reputedly upstanding past. He didn’t prance around proclaiming himself to be without sin. He allowed others to say it.

Carlson, though, does say that Hastert proved to be as duplicitous about morality as Gingrich and others in Congress: (H)e followed in the hypocritical footsteps of his predecessors, devoting much energy to shaming others about their sexual behavior. He advanced the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act through the House and proposed a constitutional amendment to annul same-sex unions in states that allowed them.”

Therein, throughout all of this, likely lies the reason for the fixation on the sex and not the money.

 

political news

Bipartisan show of respect? Not … really

It’s fair to ask this question now that Beau Biden, the son of the vice president of the United States, has been eulogized and laid to rest.

Why weren’t more Republican political leaders present at the Wilmington, Del., funeral of the son of a prominent Democratic politician?

I was struck by the news coverage this morning of the service, and by the link attached to this blog, by the virtual absence of any prominent D.C. Republican at Beau Biden’s funeral.

Beau Biden funeral draws political heavyweights

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was the only one mentioned. That’s it. He and the vice president are good friends, going back to their service together in the Senate. Indeed, the vice president served 36 years in the Senate and is known to have many GOP friends in both congressional chambers.

Where were they?

Hey, I’m just asking. These kinds of events almost always bring political foes together.

Almost always …

Now that I think of it, you know what would have been incredibly touching? I would have loved to have seen U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who made the crass and ill-timed joke about the vice president — only to apologize later for it — showing up to pay his respects in person.

 

legal news, national news, political news

McConnell may not block judge picks after all

I’m not going to be so terribly presumptuous to assume that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell read High Plains Blogger recently and may be reacting to its — I mean my — assertion that gridlock regarding judicial appointments is bad for the nation.

Still, I am heartened to hear that despite what McConnell told a radio talk show host, he really and truly doesn’t have plans to block all future circuit court and Supreme Court appointments during the remainder of President Obama’s administration.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/244196-mcconnell-backs-away-from-judicial-shutdown-talk

The president has a number of circuit judge appointments pending in the Senate, which must approve them before the judges take their lifetime seats. A McConnell spokesman said the majority leader really didn’t say all those appointments were toast. They’d get a hearing and a vote, he said.

I’ve noted already that presidents deserve to select judicial appointees to their liking. That’s a consequence of national elections and Barack Obama has won two of them, in a row.

There’s still no word yet on what the Senate would do about a Supreme Court vacancy should one occur. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is said to be in poor health, but she says she isn’t retiring. She’s one of the liberals on the court. Her departure and a replacement wouldn’t shift the balance of power, at least theoretically.

If a conservative justice were to leave the court, well, that’s another matter.

In the meantime, the threat of locking down all future Obama appointments appears now to be lessening.

I’m left to wonder: Did the majority leader actually see my blog?

Nah. Couldn’t be … but it’s fun to wonder.