Monthly Archives: September 2015

medical news, national news, political news

Don’t mess with Planned Parenthood, GOP

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PlannedParenthoodsign

What part of “Don’t Shut Down the Government” is the Republican caucus in Congress failing to understand?

Yet here we are yet again. Congress is threatening to shut down the federal government because some of its members dislike Planned Parenthood. The GOP caucus in Congress doesn’t believe that the federal government should fund Planned Parenthood because, they say, it provides abortion services to women who want to end their pregnancy.

Well, that’s just a small part of Planned Parenthood’s mission. As for abortion funding, Congress years ago approved a law — the Hyde Amendment — that banned federal money for abortion services, so the argument that the government funding of abortion falls flat.

The rest of Planned Parenthood’s mission? Oh, things such as exams designed to guard against cancer, contraceptive services … those kinds of silly things that help keep women alive and allow them to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

What’s more, we’re possibly treading into that minefield in which the government decides to deny government services and programs across the board that have nothing at all to do with Planned Parenthood.

Do these individuals in Congress forget what happens when the legislative branch acts in this petulant and ultra-punitive fashion? Do they not know how badly the public reacts when Congress does such a thing?

The public gets quite angry. At Congress. And, yes, at the those who belong to the party that run both legislative chambers. That would be the Republican Party.

A government shutdown is a fool’s errand.

If only the fools who comprise a significant segment of the majority party in Congress would just get the message.

 

national news, political news

Now it’s ‘only’ 15 in the GOP field

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks to the Illinois Chamber of Commerce Tuesday, April 17, 2012 in Springfield, Ill. Walker says he's using Illinois and its many problems as an argument for keeping him in office. The first-term Republican faces a recall election in June primarily because he restricted union bargaining rights for state employees. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

Scott Walker wasn’t supposed to call an end to his Republican presidential campaign … so early.

Wasn’t the Wisconsin governor at or near the lead in Iowa? Didn’t he appeal to those Christian evangelicals? Isn’t he the guy who stood up to those unions in Wisconsin, which plays well with the GOP base?

Well, then he started talking.

He equated those union workers to the Islamic State.

He then decided it is worth discussing the possibility of building a wall across the nation’s border with Canada.

Then along came Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina — three political outsiders — to knock the wind out of Walker’s “establishment” message.

The end of Walker’s campaign comes only a week or so after former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s swan song.

It’s becoming a bit of a guessing game now.

Who’s next? Ex-New York Gov. George Pataki? Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore?

While the media are fixated on polls and whether any of the still-large GOP field is able to reel in Trump, many of the rest of the GOP field are trying to have their voices heard.

Unfortunately for Gov. Walker, those times he actually was heard … he managed to make declarations that exposed him to ridicule.

Let the culling of the field continue.

 

national news, political news

Birther issue becomes complicated

birther

One would have thought — at least I did — that the birther issue that dogged Barack Obama for his entire first term as president would have ended when he got re-elected in 2012.

Silly me. What was I thinking?

Now we have another presidential candidate with a citizenship issue to resolve — in the eyes of some.

It’s getting complicated.

Ted Cruz is the problem. Why?

Well, the junior U.S. senator from Texas in fact was born in another country … Canada, to be exact. His mother is an American; dad is a Cuban. But the Republican presidential candidate’s citizenship has been resolved because of his mother’s heritage. The Constitution only requires that one parent needs to be a citizen in order to qualify someone to run for president.

That didn’t matter with critics of President Obama, whose late mother also was an American. He was born in Hawaii, one of our states. He has produced a birth certificate that confirms what he has said all along.

Then someone stood up in a New Hampshire town hall discussion the other day and declared that Obama is a foreign-born Muslim.

Donald Trump, another GOP presidential candidate, was running the meeting. He didn’t come to the president’s defense on that nonsensical statement.

Why not? Well, according to some, Ted Cruz’s presence on the national political stage complicates it for Trump.

If he comes to Obama’s defense, then he all but admits his own questioning of the president’s constitutional eligibility was a sham. If he defends Cruz, then that, too, eliminates his own ridiculous doubts about whether Barack Obama was qualified to hold the office to which he’s been twice elected.

Ted Cruz is qualified to run for president. Barack Obama is qualified to hold that office.

Politicians have apologized in the past for making false statements … haven’t they?

Isn’t it time for Donald Trump to come clean and admit he, um, made a mistake?

national news, political news, religious news

No place for religious bigotry

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ellison

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., is one of just two Muslim members of Congress.

He has just posted this item on social media. I feel compelled to share it here.

He is answering two leading Republican presidential candidates’ recent assertions about those who practice the Islamic faith.

Ellison writes:

“The freedom of religion is a founding principle of our nation. Our Constitution gives this right to all Americans – including elected officials. For Ben Carson, Donald Trump, or any other Republican politician to suggest that someone of any faith is unfit for office is out of touch with who we are as a people. It’s unimaginable that the leading GOP presidential candidates are resorting to fear mongering to benefit their campaigns, and every American should be disturbed that these national figures are engaging in and tolerating blatant acts of religious bigotry.”

I believe I’ll let Rep. Ellison’s words stand on their own.

 

local news

MPEV, no MPEV … downtown must move forward

Amarillo_Texas_Downtown

An election is coming soon to Amarillo.

How will it turn out? I’m not going to venture a guess. It’s an advisory vote on whether the city should proceed with construction of a multipurpose event venue that at this moment includes an athletic component. Yes, it’s a ballpark.

Pro-MPEV interests contend that “momentum” is on their side.  I hope they’re right.

Anti-MPEV interests, though, suggest they have the Big Mo.

If voters say “no” to the MPEV as it’s currently configured, then the rest of the downtown Amarillo project could be put in jeopardy.

I do not want that to happen.

Pro-MPEV forces say that the Embassy Suites downtown convention hotel is going to open in 2017, no matter what. City leaders say as well that the inertia on that project is such that even a “no” vote on the MPEV won’t stop the hotel.

Again, I hope they’re right.

My gut is churning a bit these days, though, as I ponder the impact of a negative vote on Nov. 3.

That vote and the reconstituted Local Government Corporation board give me pause. A new LGC majority reflects the newly elected majority on the Amarillo City Council — and both majorities seem quite reluctant to proceed with downtown’s proposed future as it is currently configured.

If the MPEV vote gets stalled at the ballot box, will city planners be able — or willing — to cobble together a Plan B that allows the complete project to go forward?

I hope that can happen, too.

If not, then we’ve just wasted a lot of time, emotional and political capital and, oh yeah … money!

 

national news, political news

HRC is an ‘outsider’? Really?

clintonhillary07282015getty

Hillary Clinton calls herself an “outsider.”

Hmmm. I heard that this morning on “Face the Nation.” I’m still trying to process her logic.

The Democratic presidential candidate answered a question about the leading Republican candidates — Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson — given that they are political outsiders.

Clinton then said something quite astonishing. Clinton said her gender makes her a supreme outsider.

Outsider label

Let’s see what the record shows.

  • Eight years as first lady during her husband’s two terms as president.
  • Eight more years as a U.S. senator from New York.
  • Four years as secretary of state.

OK, she’s run for president once already, getting closer than any woman in history to winning the presidential nomination of either party.

Is she an “outsider” in the mold of, say, Trump, Fiorina and Carson? Not by my — or most folks’, I’m willing to reckon — definition of the term.

She’s been at or near the center of power in Washington going back to when President Bill Clinton took the oath of office in January 1993.

That’s 22 years!

Outsider? I don’t think so.

 

religious news

Muslims, Christians … whatever

Image #: 21630241 Dr. Benjamin Carson, director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, speaks to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, March 16, 2013. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS HEALTH) REUTERS /JONATHAN ERNST /LANDOV

Ben Carson now has weighed in on the matter of religion and politics.

The good doctor’s take: Americans shouldn’t elect a Muslim as president, apparently because he believes the faith isn’t compatible with the U.S. Constitution.

Carson weighs in

I’m trying to find where in the Constitution it speaks to its compatibility with any religion. The only thing I can determine is that the Constitution — the finished document — is expressly non-religious. It doesn’t condone any religion. Not Christianity, or Judaism, not Islam, not Buddhist, Hindu or Shinto.

Surely, Dr. Carson — one of 16 individuals seeking the Republican presidential nomination — knows this. Doesn’t he?

It’s neutral. Get it? The only reference I can find even to the word “religion” is in Article VI, where it declares “no religious test” shall be given to anyone seeking public office anywhere in the United States of America.

How about we not talk about whether one’s religious faith qualifies — or disqualifies — him or her from serving a nation that comprises people of many faiths?

 

State news

A whole other country … indeed

gulf of mexico

ROCKPORT, Texas — We’re learning first-hand what the Texas travel industry has been saying since, oh, seemingly forever.

The state is like “a whole other country.”

That’s how it goes. The idea is to tell visitors about the physical diversity of this huge state. Politically diverse? Not really, but that’s a subject for another time.

My wife — and our dog and cat — and I are halfway through a two-week journey through much of the eastern half of our huge state.

Texas comprises more than 260,000 square miles. We’re going to see most of its physical diversity by the time we arrive back home on the High Plains, which I refer to affectionately as the Texas Tundra.

We’ve traipsed across the treeless Caprock, camped out among the thick forests that surround Lake Texoma, motored through the Piney Woods of East Texas, endured the stifling humidity of the Golden Triangle and again just west of Houston.

Tonight we’re camped out along the bay that comes off the Gulf of Mexico. We’re about 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi. Rockport’s a nice town, but we intend to enjoy the gulf water as much as is humanly possible.

The nice part about this latest stop on our intrastate journey is that it’s cool enough during the day that we can go without turning on the air conditioner in the fifth wheel we’ve hauled from Amarillo.

Does it get any better than that?

In a few days we’ll head toward the Hill Country, where we’ll see even more lovely countryside.

I doubt we’ll be able to go without the A/C but, what the heck, you can’t have everything.

We’ll be back home on the Tundra soon enough.

The journey across this vast state, however, has given us a treat we’ll carry with us for a very long time.

 

national news, political news

‘I didn’t say anything’

trumpdonaldtwo09192015getty

Donald Trump’s defense against criticism of his non-reaction to the birther nimrod at his town hall audience?

“I didn’t say anything.”

Well, Mr. Trump. That is precisely the point of the criticism that’s come your way.

Trump gets hammered again

The guy stood up and said President Obama wasn’t born in this country, that he’s a Muslim and that the nation needs to get rid of “the problem,” which he said are Muslims.

Trump said the news networks — CNN, Fox, MSNBC — have been all over his backside in the past because he talked too much. Now that he’s kept his mouth shut, that’s cause for criticism. Trump doesn’t get it … he said.

Well, the Republican presidential candidate should have told that town hall birther that he is wrong about the president and that he is wrong to suggest we should “get rid” of millions of American citizens simply because they worship a particular faith.

No, Trump didn’t say anything.

He buttoned his lip at precisely the wrong moment.

 

religious news

Pope Francis set to make some uncomfortable

Pope Francis at St Peter's

Pope Francis speaks like a humble man.

His message, though, is lofty beyond imagination.

He’s landed in Cuba, where he’ll tell the communist rulers of the island nation to give the Catholic Church there freedom to preach the word of Jesus Christ.

Then he’ll come to Washington, where he’ll speak to a joint session of Congress and will tell lawmakers that the world mustn’t worship capitalism and, yes, it must deal with global crises, such as climate change.

Pope coming to the U.S.

The Holy Father’s critics call him a Marxist. There’s been some talk that a few Republican lawmakers will boycott the speech on Capitol Hill. That would be a mistake, just as it was a mistake for Democrats to stay away when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to a joint congressional session to argue against the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration.

The earthly leader of a great Christian denomination needs to be herd by legislators who help govern the world’s greatest nation, even if he says thing that make them uncomfortable.

The good news, at least as far as I’m concerned, is that the congressional chamber will be full.

Indeed, it’s not every day that the pope comes to Washington.

Welcome to the United States of America, Your Holiness.