Monthly Archives: April 2016

political news, State news

Why was this ballot lost — allegedly — in the mail?

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I’ll admit to a letting out a chuckle when I heard the report.

It dealt with whether former Texas Gov. Rick Perry cast a vote in the March 1 Texas Republican Party primary election.

He made a big show of his endorsement of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a fellow Texan, for the GOP presidential nomination. He joined other political leaders in urging other Texans to get out and vote for their candidate.

Then, lo and behold, it turns out no record of “James Richard Perry” voting has turned up in Fayette County, where Rick and Anita Perry now reside.

What happened to that ballot?

My first instinct was to think the worst: The former governor was upset at having to drop out of the race a second time because Republican voters around the country didn’t love him as much as Texas Republicans have shown they do. He became governor in 2000 and served longer in that office than anyone in state history.

Then he endorsed Cruz, one of the nemeses on this year’s GOP campaign trail.

Maybe, I figured, he just said “Aww, to heck with it. No one’ll know the difference.”

Then my more compassionate side kicked in.

Perhaps the ballot was simply lost in the mail. Stuff happens, right?

But why this ballot? Why this man’s ballot? Of all the ballots to lose in the mail, it just had to be the one belonging to the Pride of Paint Creek, the state’s record-setting former governor and two-time Republican presidential candidate.

Is the mail carrier a mole for the Democratic Party? Might he have tossed the ballot when no one was looking?

Well, of course not. It’s just kind of fun to speculate on the absurd.

I am now prepared to give Gov. Perry the benefit of the doubt. He voted. The ballot got lost.

Someone, somewhere within the U.S. Postal Service probably should be offering up a contrite “oops.”

 

International news, military news, national news, political news

POTUS shows command of the obvious

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Barack Obama demonstrated today a compelling command of the obvious when he said the Republicans’ leading candidate for president “doesn’t know much about foreign policy.”

The president was responding to comments from Donald J. Trump about allowing South Korea and Japan develop nuclear weapons programs.

Yep, Trump said he would be open to that possibility as a deterrent to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

According to Politico: “The person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula or the world generally,” Obama told reporters as he finished the last of a series of high-level meetings on nuclear security in Washington.

“The person” to whom Obama was referring also said the United States shouldn’t even rule out using nuclear weapons to fight the Islamic State in the Middle East and, oh yes, in Europe.

Oh … my.

That’s the obvious criticism: that Trump doesn’t know diddly about U.S. foreign policy, its aims, how it protects U.S. interests and how it intends to maintain peace.

What is not so obvious is the question that the president didn’t ask. Perhaps he didn’t want to stick the proverbial hot branding iron in the eye of the Trumpsters who keep cheering their man on.

I’ll ask it here: How is it that the individuals who keep voting for this guy give him a pass on such obvious ignorance?

I am acquainted with some Trumpsters here in Amarillo. They keep answering with the same refrain: Trump “tells it like it is”; political correctness be damned!

As Ricky Ricardo might say: Ayy, caramba!

Trump’s ignorance keeps revealing itself in breathtaking fashion.

Just this week alone, he said women should be “punished” if they obtain an illegal abortion; he then reversed himself … twice! Then came the remarkable assertion about the use of nukes to fight radical Islamic terrorists. To be fair, he didn’t pledge to drop A-bombs on them, only that we shouldn’t take their use “off the table.”

Still, this individual does not grasp the meaning and the gravitas of what he says. As the president noted today in his remarks, the world pays careful attention to what major political leaders in this country say. Obama said: “I’ve said before that, you know, people pay attention to American elections. What we do is really important to the rest of the world, and even in those countries that are used to a carnival atmosphere in their own politics want sobriety and clarity when it comes to U.S. elections because they understand the president of the United States needs to know what’s going on around the world.”

Trump may say he’s not a politician, but that’s now patently untrue. He is a politician seeking the highest office in the land. He seeks to become chief executive, the head of state and the commander in chief of the United States of America.

Yet he keeps shooting off his mouth about matters of which he knows not a single thing.

How in the name of all that is holy does this clown keep getting away with it?

 

local news, media news

This is how you trick ’em

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My pal Jon Mark Beilue has established an April Fool’s Day tradition at the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked for 17-plus years.

This man is a master of putting one over on readers.

He does it intentionally once each year. He did so again today with this masterpiece about a proposed location for the Barack H. Obama Presidential Library.

He once spun a yarn about film star/heartthrob Matthew McConaughey moving to Amarillo; he once told a tall tale about the late Stanley Marsh 3 establishing an art museum inside an abandoned grocery store building next to Interstate 40. There have been others; those are two of my personal favorites.

I’ll just add this point before asking you to enjoy it as I have done already today.

The beauty of this kind of writing, which Jon Mark does better than anyone else I know, is that it tempts you to suspend your disbelief when you read it. You actually start to believe it could happen that, somehow, it’s not a prank.

Well, obviously it is.

Most of us in this part of the Texas surely are glad that it’s all a joke.

Others of us, well, might think differently.

Still, this is brilliant.

Enjoy.

local news, Sports news

Parents have the real ‘skin in the game’

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Let’s chat some more about that proposed West Texas A&M University football stadium that has been endorsed by a fraction of the student body at the Canyon campus.

Some social media discussion centers on whether Moms and Dads are actually footing the bill for the stadium, which WT officials say will be paid for partially with student fees.

The plan is to assess an additional $152 per-semester fee for students enrolling at WT. School brass said that WT will use reserve funds that have accrued as well to help with the cost.

But who actually pays the money?

Yep, it’s Mom and Dad.

I don’t have a dog in this particular fight. My sons graduated from college in 1994 and 1995. Our older son graduated from Sam Houston State University, the younger son from the Art Institute of Dallas. We moved to Amarillo from Beaumont in January 1995, so our college obligation was all but completed by the time we got here.

I do recall, though, discussing student fees with both of our sons as they were working their way toward obtaining their degrees.

So, is it possible, then, that WT students could have had similar discussions with their parents as this football stadium idea got kicked around at the campus?

This looks to me like a fair and equitable way to help finance construction of an athletic facility at WT.

Furthermore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. WT President J. Pat O’Brien — who’s retiring at the end of the current academic year — laid out a fairly ambitious concept near the beginning of his tenure at WT to update the athletic infrastructure. The aim, I recall him saying, was to create a recruitment tool to lure students to WT.

Enrollment has grown. The campus has prospered.

The parents of the students currently enrolled at WT have gotten a good return on their investment.

local news, Sports news

WT student body speaks: Let’s build it

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Can’t we just once settle something without discussing the validity of the vote?

West Texas A&M University’s student body — or a small fraction of it — has voted narrowly to endorse the construction of a new on-campus football stadium.

WT enrolls about 9,000 students; of that total, fewer than 1,600 of them cast ballots on the idea. What’s more, it passed by 68 votes. Hardly a smashing mandate.

Hey, there’s no rule that said it had to pass by a larger margin among a larger pool of voters. Correct?

One of the issues appears to be the timing of the construction and the notion that current students will be exempt from the proposed $152 per-semester fee increase that will be levied on future students to help pay for construction of the unnamed stadium that’s estimated to cost about $26 million.

No worries, says retiring WT President J.  Pat O’Brien. The school will use reserve funds that comprise fees contributed by current WT students. Thus, he said, the current student body has “skin in the game.”

I want to applaud the university for asking the students to decide whether to support this idea. It’s going to be their financial burden to bear and it is only right to ensure that the school has the support of the student body before proceeding with construction.

I also lament the lack of turnout among the student body. I get that students are busy. They have lots on their minds, particularly the upperclassmen and women who are planning their post-university lives.

However, the size of the turnout really doesn’t matter. We elect presidents of the United States of America often with barely more than half of those who are eligible to vote.

As for whether today’s student body has “skin in the game,” that’s an unavoidable circumstance. Today’s students cannot be expected to hang around longer than they need to just to pay for a major construction project.

My hope now is that the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents signs off on the project and that the school can build a stadium that will make the students proud.

 

national news, political news

Memo to Trump: Abortion is not an ‘off the cuff’ issue

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Here comes the defense of Donald J. Trump’s hideous declaration on national TV this week that women should be “punished” if they obtain an illegal abortion.

He was speaking “off the cuff” during a town hall meeting that was televised by MSNBC. That’s what the Republican presidential campaign frontrunner’s spokeswoman told Fox News.

Many of us heard Trump make the statement under intense questioning from Chris Matthews. We also heard about his immediate reversal.

Trump needs to understand something if he has a prayer of avoiding a complete implosion of his presidential candidacy.

It is that there are a number of issues that require deep thought and nuance when the candidate is pressed to discuss them.

They include, oh: nuclear proliferation, climate change, immigration reform, health care reform and, yes, abortion.

I’m sure others are out there, too.

Trump’s flack, Katrina Pierson, told the Fox News Channel, “Well I say when you are a political candidate for eight months, you are speaking off the cuff. That’s one of his appeals, that he’s not a scripted politician.“

What is so wrong with thoughtfulness?

Scripted pols learn that their words matter. Unscripted pols need to get that, too. When the subject turns to abortion — an issue that gets zealots on both sides of the divide worked up into a frothing frenzy — then those words matter a great deal.

Trump hasn’t gotten it. He likely never will get it. He’ll keep on speaking “off the cuff” on issues that require some study, soul-searching and a comprehensive understanding.

Pierson is right about Trump’s “appeal” to those who keep laughing off this stuff.

It’s not funny.

 

legal news, national news, political news

GOP wall beginning to crack

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Republican resistance to President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland is beginning to show signs of weakening.

Two GOP U.S. senators, Susan Collins of Maine and John Boozman of Arkansas, say they’re going to meet with Judge Garland. Jerry Moran of Kansas, a reliably conservative lawmaker, has said the same thing. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, too. Same with Mark Kirk of Illinois.

Is a mere meeting with two Senate Republicans enough to bring this nomination to the confirmation process? Hardly. The meetings, though, do seem to suggest that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s effort to block the nomination is being seen for what it is: a political game of obstruction.

Is it beginning to sink in to some GOP senators that Garland is the best nominee they’re going to get? He’s supremely qualified. He’s a judicial moderate, a studious and thoughtful jurist.

Consider what’s happening out there on the political campaign trail.

GOP frontrunner Donald J. Trump is beginning to implode. He said women should be “punished” for obtaining an abortion, then took it back; he said he wouldn’t “rule out” the use of nuclear weapons against the Islamic State, even saying the same thing about deploying nukes in Europe; his campaign manager is accused of battery against a female reporter.

However, Trump remains the frontrunner for the Republican Party presidential nomination.

Do members of the Senate GOP caucus understand that Trump’s chances of being elected president are vaporizing?

McConnell said Obama shouldn’t get to fill the vacancy created by the death of conservative judicial icon Antonin Scalia. That task should belong to the next president, McConnell said.

And who is that likely to be? I believe it’s going to be Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The GOP-led Senate is now facing the prospect of simultaneous earthquakes. The Democratic presidential nominee could win the White House in a landslide and the Senate could flip back to Democratic control once the votes are counted in November.

Against that backdrop, we’re beginning to hear from an increasing number of Republican senators that, yep, Merrick Garland is as good as we’re going to get.