Monthly Archives: June 2016

national news, political news

Gipper’s son is right: Trump is no Reagan

reagantrump

It probably is no surprise to those of you who read this blog regularly to know that of Ronald Reagan’s two sons, my favorite is Ron, the left-leaning radio talk show host.

The Gipper’s other son, Michael — who also is a talk show host — tilts too far to the right for my taste. I once listened to him speak on a panel at the  1994 National Conference of Editorial Writers annual meeting in Phoenix. Oh brother, he was a serious loudmouth.

These days, Michael Reagan is making some sense as it regards whether the latest pending Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, deserves to be lumped with President Reagan.

In the view of the son: No way, man.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/283165-reagans-son-nothing-reaganesque-about-trump

Trump shares none of the late president’s commitment to conservative principles, according to Michael Reagan, who told Smerconish that his dad wouldn’t vote for Trump if he were around today. Michael Reagan said he has no intention, either, of voting for Trump. And, no, he’s not going to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Moreover, Trump embodies none of Daddy Reagan’s good humor, his grace, class and dignity.

“There’s nothing really Reaganesque” about him, Reagan told CNN’s Michael Smerconish. “I mean, my father was humble. That’s not what you find in a Donald Trump, I might say.

“He wasn’t demeaning. He didn’t talk down to people. He talked with people, which is the complete opposite of what Donald Trump, in fact, does,” he said.

Reagan went on to mention the second debate in 1984 between his dad and Democratic nominee, former Vice President Walter Mondale. The president had done poorly in the first debate, causing some pundits to wonder out loud if he was suffering some mental slippage. The question came to him in the second encounter: Mr. President, are you up to the job? He answered, “I will not for political purposes exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

He brought the house down. The person who laughed the hardest was, that’s right, Vice President Mondale.

Michael Reagan sees none of that in Donald Trump.

Neither do I. Or a lot of others.

legal news, political news

Stand tall, Rep. Ted Poe!

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I’ve been critical of some members of the Texas congressional delegation of late.

They haven’t distinguished themselves at times while standing under the national spotlight.

U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, a Republican from Humble — near Houston — however, has made me proud.

Poe took to the floor of the House of Representatives to demand that the judge in a notorious rape case at Stanford University recuse himself.

You no doubt have heard of this case. Judge Aaron Persky sentenced a young Stanford athlete, swimmer Brock Turner, to six months in prison and three years probation for raping a young woman.

The light sentence outraged Poe –who was a former prosecutor and trial judge before being elected to Congress. He said: “The judge should be removed and the rapist should do more time for the dastardly deed. I hope the appeals court … overturns the pathetic sentence and gives him the punishment he deserves.”

Here’s the story as it was reported by the Texas Tribune:

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/09/texas-congressman-demands-removal-judge-stanford-s/

You might ask: What business is it of a Texas congressman to order a California judge to remove himself from a case being adjudicated under another state’s laws?

I don’t care if he has no business.

Rep. Poe has spoken for a lot of Americans who are outraged over the shamefully light sentence given to a young man who sexually assaulted another human being. He committed an act of extreme violence.

The Tribune reported:

“Persky said he chose not to impose a harsher punishment because ‘a prison sentence would have a severe impact on [Turner].’

“’Well isn’t that the point?’ Poe said in his speech to the House. ‘The punishment for rape should be longer than a semester in college.’”

Severe impact? On a criminal? What about the impact that the crime Turner committed had on his victim?

Ted Poe had a reputation in the Houston area of being a no-nonsense judge, perhaps owing to his prior work as a prosecutor.

I’m glad to know he has used his federal office as a bully pulpit to take up for the victim of a violent crime.

International news, national news, political news

Yes, the world is laughing at us, Mr. Trump

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donald-trump-30

Donald J. Trump keeps repeating a number of mantras as he campaigns for president of the United States.

“I’ll build a wall.”

“I will make America great again.”

“I love Hispanics.”

“I cherish women.”

“The world is laughing at us.”

There’s more of ’em, certainly. But of the five listed here, only one of them has a grain of truth to it. It’s the last one, about how the world is “laughing at us.”

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is right. The world is laughing at us. They’re in stitches over in the Kremlin, at 10 Downing Street, at Los Pinos in Mexico City. In Ottawa, New Delhi, Beijing, Tokyo, Ankara, Berlin, Rome, Paris, Jerusalem, Canberra and Brasilia, they’re all howling, man.

However, the object of their derision — I would venture to speculate — isn’t the current government of the United States. They are laughing at the idea that a once-great American political party would be on the verge of nominating someone as reckless, ill-informed, bombastic and narcissistic as Donald J. Trump.

I am not going to walk you through the interminably long list of absolute foolishness that has poured out of this guy’s mouth. You need to see them all to understand what I’m talking about.

Those other world powers are laughing at us because somehow this clown has persuaded a strong plurality of Republican primary voters to back his candidacy. He’s gathered enough delegates to win the GOP nomination this summer. Then he’s going to campaign against a former secretary of state, a former U.S. senator and a former first lady for the presidency.

And all along the way, he’s going to continue hurling insults and will continue to hang childish labels on his political opponents — many of them from within his own political party.

President Barack Obama has joined the battle against Trump. The president said the other evening that “this isn’t a reality TV show. This is serious business.” He’s talking, of course, about the job of statecraft, of running the massive federal government, of being commander in chief of the most powerful military force in world history.

Is the world laughing at us? You bet it is.

That laughter would stop immediately, though, if hell were to freeze over and Donald J. Trump becomes the next president of the United States.

Aww, what the heck. I found this link:

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/Donald-Trump/a/Donald-Trump-Quotes.htm

Take a look for yourself. Then we can all join the rest of the world in the laughter.

education news, religious news, Sports news, State news

Baylor announces much-needed reforms

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It would seem logical to presume that an institution with Baylor University’s stellar reputation would be among the last places on Earth where one could expect to witness an unfolding sex scandal.

It’s a faith-based university known for its high moral standards. Isn’t that right?

It’s also known as a place where they play some pretty good college football.

So, some football players get entangled in a sexual assault case and the university allegedly turns its back on the complaints filed by students against the athletes.

The uproar has been ferocious. With absolutely justifiable reason.

Baylor now has announced plans to implement recommendations from a panel formed to fix what’s wrong at the school.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/10/baylor-announces-sexual-assault-task-force/

The Pepper Hamilton commission has found a “fundamental failure” at Baylor to uphold federal Title IX provisions that are supposed to protect students from abuses such as what occurred at the school.

One player has been convicted of sexual assault, but the stuff hit the fan after it was revealed that university administrators tried to hide the complaints against athletes.

Head football coach Art Briles was fired. University president Ken Starr was kicked out of his office and he quit his ceremonial job as chancellor; he remains on the faculty as a law professor.  Athletic director Ian McCaw resigned.

All three of those individuals had to go.

Now it’s up to Baylor to pick up the pieces of its shattered reputation.

The Texas Tribune reports: “Let me assure you all that we are deeply sorry for the harm done to students in our care,” interim president David Garland wrote in a letter posted online. “Even during the course of Pepper Hamilton’s investigation, we began adopting improvements to our processes, and now we are pursuing the other improvements remaining in the recommendations.”

Pressure is mounting for the school to release the contents of the Pepper Hamilton report.

That seems like a good start to clearing the air and shining the light of accountability on what has occurred at the school.

I’m sure that somewhere in that report is a stern warning that Baylor needs to heed to the letter in the future: Do not, under any circumstances, even think of covering up a report of sexual assault.

national news, political news

Teleprompters and tweets will be the ‘highlight’

Teleprompter_Lectern

I guess we’ll have to call the 2016 presidential campaign a battle of Teleprompters and tweets.

It all kind makes me wish for more “horse-race” coverage with media pundits fixated on who’s up and who’s down as the race for the White House unfolds.

Not this time … maybe.

Much of the coverage over the past few hours of Republican nominee-to-be Donald J. Trump’s Richmond, Va., rally speech dealt with how he ditched the Teleprompter and veered wildly “off script.”

Trump used the device in a previous speech after he won all those primary battles the same night that Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton clinched her party’s nomination.

The punditry critiqued Trump’s Teleprompter performance as “staid,” “uninspired” and a few other not-too-flattering terms.

So, he went on the attack again — free-wheeling it without the device. It wasn’t “staid.” It was typical Trump, full of stream-consciousness riffs about the success of his businesses and his various name-calling, referring to Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” and of course to “Crooked Hillary.”

He’s becoming the Twitter champ as well.

The day that Clinton gave that blistering critique of Trump’s supposed “foreign policy,” she mentioned how he likes to send out tweets and said he probably was doing so as she spoke. Sure enough, that’s what he did.

Sen. Warren also is pretty swift with the Twitter method of communicating. Clinton’s probably going to get the hang of it, too.

The deal with the Teleprompter analysis, though, is that Trump brought it up. He’s the one who keeps chiding other candidates for relying on the device. Some are good at using it. Others are, well, not so good. Trump is one of the latter category of public speakers.

Then again, his aimless, scatter-shot extemporaneous delivery of his applause lines aren’t so hot, either.

Let the campaign continue.

State news

No smiling allowed in Houston jail

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What do you see as you examine this picture?

I’ll tell you what I see. I see a man being throttled by someone else, with a second person’s hand at the back of his neck. The picture was taken apparently as the young man, Christopher Johnson, was being booked into the Harris County, Texas, jail on a charge of drunken driving.

It happened on July 29, 2015.

Guess what. Johnson is suing the Harris County Sheriff’s Office for violating his civil rights by choking him. Why were they treating him like that? Johnson’s suit says it was because he was smiling during the mug shot photo session in the county jail.

I saw this story and started laughing. Out loud. OK, I know it’s not funny. But still …

http://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-man-choked-smiling-mugshot/story?id=

I honestly don’t know what is the more ridiculous element of the story: that he was smiling in the first place after being thrown into the slammer or that corrections officers allegedly thought it was OK to choke the fellow.

According to ABC News: “While posing for what he says were approximately 10 photographs, Johnson claims he was choked by the two Harris County employees for approximately 30 seconds, the lawsuit states. ‘This is how I always take my pictures,’ Johnson said to the booking officer, according to the lawsuit.”

Always? Even when you’re being arrested for driving a motor vehicle while drunk?

I won’t go there. Maybe he thought it was funny. Then again, some of us act strangely when we’re under the influence of intoxicants.

As for the merits of the complaint, I won’t pass judgment on that, either. There might have been another reason why the employees felt the need to put their hands on the guy’s throat. He might have been resisting them, which, quite naturally, the lawsuit won’t ever reveal.

If what Johnson’s suit alleges is true, then I’ll just say: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

national news, political news

Imagine this kind of letter today

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letter

Try to imagine a letter of this quality being left by a president of one party to a successor from the other party.

This letter came from the 41st president, George H.W. Bush, who left it for the 42nd, Bill Clinton. It’s gone viral.

The letter is fascinating in the generous tone that President Bush took toward the man who beat him in that brutal 1992 election campaign. Bush told Clinton that the new president would be “our” president and told him that any personal success he enjoys will be the country’s success.

Presidents leave these notes to their successors as a matter of tradition. Rarely do they become public, as this one has become.

Incoming presidents usually don’t reveal the contents of the letter left by their immediate predecessor.

It just makes me wonder whether this kind of letter could be written by President Obama in the highly unlikely event his successor happens to be Donald J. Trump.

The political climate in Washington — and throughout much of the nation — has become so toxic it makes this kind of good will seem virtually impossible if the presidency changes partisan hands.

Something tells me, though, that Barack Obama will have no difficulty leaving this kind of message for the woman who will succeed him in the White House.

national news, political news, religious news

Yes, pray for the president

perdue

David Perdue is a U.S. senator from Georgia.

I don’t know much about him, other than he’s a Republican and — perhaps because he’s a Southern Republican — he’s probably quite conservative and devout in his faith.

He spoke today to the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in which he was talking about how we should pray for those in leadership. He mentioned the president, Barack Obama.

“We should pray for the president,” Sen. Perdue said.

Then he mentioned an Old Testament passage to illustrate his point.

“May his days be few,” Perdue said in quoting Psalms 109:8, drawing some cheers and applause from the GOP-friendly audience. It’s a nice passage and, taken by itself, has a light-hearted political twinge to it, which is one of the more fascinating elements of the Bible; one can put many passages into whatever secular context you want.

But wait! This particular Psalm says much more. Here’s what verses 9 through 12 tell us:

“May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

“May his children wander about and beg, seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit!

“May the creditor seize all that he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil.

“Let there be none to extend kindness to him, nor any to pity his fatherless children.”

Hmmm. It kind of loses its light-heartedness. Yes?

national news, political news

But … senator, you cast your vote in secret

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dole

Bob Dole says he just cannot support Hillary Rodham Clinton’s quest for the presidency.

The former Republican U.S. senator from Kansas said he’s been a Republican all his life. Donald J. Trump, his party’s presumed presidential nominee, is “flawed,” according to Dole, but he’s getting his vote anyway.

“I have an obligation to the party. I mean, what am I going to do? I can’t vote for George Washington. So I’m supporting Donald Trump,” Dole explained Friday on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

I think I want to reset this for just a moment.

I have great respect and admiration for Sen. Dole. I admire him for his valiant service to the country in the Army during World War II, for his years in the Senate and for his ability to reach across the aisle to work with Democrats; he and fellow World War II hero Sen. George McGovern, for example, were great personal friends and occasional legislative partners, particularly on programs involving agriculture.

He said, though, that he has to put party first and he must support Trump in his upcoming fight against Clinton.

The reset is this: Sen. Dole can say it all he wants — until he runs out of breath — that he’s going to vote a certain way.

But one of the many beauties of our political system is that we get to vote in private. It’s a secret. We all can blab our brains out over who we intend to vote for, but when the time comes we can change our mind.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bob-dole-endorses-donald-trump-000000912.html

I think of Bob Dole as more of a patriot than a partisan.

He had been involved with government for many decades. He ran for president himself in 1996, losing in an Electoral College landslide to President Bill Clinton.

I don’t intend to sound cynical about what Bob Dole is going to do when the time comes to cast his vote. However, his party’s presidential nominee is like a volcano waiting to erupt.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Sen. Dole changes his mind over the course of the next few weeks and perhaps decide to keep that spot on his ballot unchecked.

A part of me would like to prove it.

entertainment news, local news

Hess’s legacy lives on in The Canyon

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I did not know Neil Hess, although I surely knew of him.

Hess’s reputation was — and still is — huge in the community he left behind some years ago.

Hess died this week, but I’m so glad and grateful that one of his shining legacies lives on in the form of that play they perform every summer on the floor of Palo Duro Canyon.

“Texas” is a musical that tells the story through song, dance, music and lots of color of the settling of the Texas Panhandle. It became Neil Hess’s “baby” over the many years he served as artistic director of the musical.

My wife and I have been to the play, well, countless times during our 21-plus years living in Amarillo. We enjoy it every single year. We plan in just a few days to take our granddaughter, her brother and her parents to the play to watch the spectacle unfold in the 2016 version of “Texas.”

No tribute to Hess, though, cannot avoid mentioning the unceremonious manner in which he was terminated as artistic director of the play. The Panhandle Heritage Foundation board committed — in my view, at least — a monumental PR blunder when it fired Hess and then spent several days avoiding any explanation as to why it did what it did.

Moreover, Hess had just gone to Austin to receive the Texas Medal of Arts from then-Gov. Rick Perry; the award commemorated his many years contributing to the state’s rich arts culture.

Then he was fired.

Well, the art he helped create remains for visitors to enjoy.

We will continue to do so for as long as we are able to visit the canyon theater.

Rest in peace, Neil Hess … and thank you for all you did to enliven and enrich our community.