Monthly Archives: July 2017

national news, political news

Is there a Howard Baker out there?

The great Howard Baker asked a question for the ages in 1974.

“What did the president know,” the late Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee asked, “and when did he know it?”

Baker was serving as vice chairman — and ranking Republican — of the U.S. Senate select committee that was investigating the Watergate scandal that eventually forced President Nixon to resign and sent several of his top aides to prison.

The question came during one of the many hearings the committee was conducting to ferret out the truth of what was blown off initially as a “third-rate burglary” of the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.

I know that pundits have posed the question. I also have heard some pols ask it in the context of conversation.

But now we are being faced with the same scenario that confronted President Nixon and his top campaign and White House aides. It involves a meeting involving Donald J. Trump Jr., Jared Kushner (son-in-law of the president), and Paul Manafort, head of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign. They met with a Russian lawyer who sent them all an email advising them that the Russian government had some dirt on Hillary Rodham Clinton it wanted to pass on to the Trump campaign.

The revelation of the email now focuses investigators more sharply on whether the Trump campaign cooperated with Russian officials who were hacking into our electoral system, seeking to undermine Clinton’s effort to defeat Trump.

Did the three men — two of whom are members of the Republican presidential candidate’s family — advise the Big Man of the meeting in advance?

What did the president know during the campaign and when did he know it?

I am awaiting that question to come in some formal venue — say, at a congressional hearing. I also am awaiting the president’s answer.

Is there another Howard Baker out there among congressional Republicans who would dare ask that question?

International news

Mitt was ahead of his time

It’s time for a serious mea culpa.

Mitt Romney once declared during the 2012 presidential campaign that Russia presented the “greatest geopolitical threat” to the United States of America.

I was one of millions of Americans who laughed at the Republican presidential nominee.

Five years later, I regret laughing. I regret dismissing Mitt’s assessment. I regret writing some negative blog posts about what the nominee said.

We are learning today — and in the course of the Donald J. Trump campaign and his presidential administration — that the previous GOP nominee was ahead of his time.

It can be argued, I suppose, that international terrorists presented a greater geopolitical threat than Russia in 2012. Our special forces had just killed Osama bin Laden, but al-Qaeda was still going strong. The Islamic State had emerged as a monstrous threat as well.

The Russians, to my mind, seemed at the time to have been relegated to a back bench.

Silly me. Mitt Romney seems to have been spot on.

The Russians are undermining NATO; they invaded Ukraine; they are propping up a murderous regime in Syria. They also sought to affect the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The startling revelation today from Donald J. Trump Jr. that he accepted a meeting invitation anticipating dirt on Hillary Rodham Clinton from the Russian government suggests an existential threat to this nation’s sovereignty.

There’s still a lot of ground to cover before we determine any criminality on the part of the Trump presidential campaign. However, I do believe it is becoming quite clear that the Russians remain a force with which we must reckon.

Gov. Romney, I hereby apologize for doubting you.

business news, education news, local news

WT making the turn in downtown Amarillo

I surely understand that much of the attention focusing on downtown Amarillo’s revival centers on that new ballpark/multipurpose event venue.

It’s a big deal, to be clear. They’re going to start busting up concrete in a few months and by April 2018, the MPEV will be open for business as the city welcomes the AA minor-league baseball franchise set to play hardball at the venue.

Oh, but wait! Something else really big is coming along in the city’s downtown district. It’s at the corner of Eight Avenue and Tyler Street. West Texas A&M University is finishing up Phase One of its new Amarillo Center.

WT purchased the old Commerce Building a couple years ago. Then Texas A&M University System regents allocated money to gut the old structure and turn it into a downtown campus.

I’ll be honest: When I first heard about WT moving its Amarillo classrooms from the Chase Tower to the Commerce Building, I envisioned a fairly quick and simple turnaround. WT would tear the guts out of the building, add some new rooms, reconfigure the floor plan a bit, hook up the electronics and then open the doors for college students.

Oh, no. It’s a lot more complicated than that.

WT has essentially rebuilt the structure. Yes, it’s the same framework. The exterior, shall we say, bears zero resemblance to the Commerce Building. Phase Two construction is going to commence soon.

Read about it here.

It’s a beautiful addition to the downtown district’s physical appearance.

Is it a totally positive development that lacks any downside? Not exactly.

You see, WT is going to vacate several floors at the 31-story Chase Tower, which already has seen a large portion of its building go dark with Excel Energy’s relocation into a new office structure on Buchanan Street. Roughly half of the Chase Tower will be vacant when WT starts classes at its Amarillo Center.

That ain’t good, man.

I did receive assurances, though, from Aaron Emerson, a partner in Gaut Whittenberg Emerson commercial real estate agents that they are shopping the Chase Tower aggressively for new tenants; moreover, Emerson told me he has great confidence that the building will be reoccupied.

I’ll hope for the best on that matter.

As for the new WT downtown Amarillo campus, I welcome the university’s increased profile in the city’s central business district.

International news, legal news, national news

What do we fear from a deep probe into Russian meddling?

Timothy Snyder is a brilliant young historian who has consented to an interview on a podcast to which I’ve been listening.

He is an admitted anti-Trumpkin. He thinks badly of the president of the United States, as does the interviewer, Sam Harris.

Snyder has written a book, “The Road to Tyranny,” which is the subject of the podcast interview.

His interview is quite lengthy. If you have a good bit of time, I encourage you to listen to it here. I doubt those of you who support the president would want to hear what this fellow has to say. Still, take a listen anyway.

He offers up a lot of theories about current trends and how they relate to where we’ve gone as a nation and what has happened in other places around the world. And, yes, there are plenty of Hitler references.

For this blog post, I want to focus on a tiny snippet of what Snyder said about the investigation into “the Russia thing” by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is examining whether the Trump presidential campaign “colluded” with Russian government spooks seeking to undermine the 2016 election.

Professor Snyder doesn’t quite get why the pro-Trump crowd opposes the probe Mueller is leading. Indeed, why do they? As Snyder points out, if Mueller’s investigation reveals nothing illegal occurred, if it produces a clean bill of political health for Donald Trump, then all that’s left is that “we have an intelligence problem.” The Russians hacked into our democratic process and our intelligence community was unable to detect it and prevent it.

The flip side, of course, is that Mueller’s legal team might uncover something else.

Wherever it goes, the special counsel’s investigation should proceed. We are bound to learn something from it.

International news, national news, political news

Is that a smoking gun over there?

Hmm. That smoldering around the White House is beginning to reveal its source … maybe, perhaps, possibly.

Then again, maybe not.

Donald J. Trump Jr. has just released a head-scratching set of emails that detail some information he received from the Russian government about dirt it had dug up on Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was running against Donald J. Trump Sr. for president of the United States.

Don Jr. told the Russians “I love it” that they have dirt on Hillary. You see, Junior was working on Dad’s campaign. The Russians wanted Donald Sr. to become the next president and apparently were doing things to facilitate that event.

Now we see that Don Jr. has been dragged right into the middle of this growing controversy. He ended up meeting with a Russian lawyer, along with campaign chief Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka Trump (Don’s sis and the president’s daughter) and now a key White House policy adviser.

Here’s a new Question of the Day: Do you really and truly believe that none of these people — all of whom were up to their armpits in trying to get Daddy Trump elected president — would have kept any of this from him while he was campaigning for the high and exalted office?

The head-scratching, by the way, is occurring among legal eagles and pols around Washington who are wondering whether Don Jr.’s own legal counsel actually advised him to release this information to the public.

The hits just keep on comin’, man.

Check out the story here.

I’m betting there’ll be a good bit more to digest as we move forward.

International news

Another stunning example of incompetence

How many more examples of presidential incompetence do we need to witness?

Here’s the latest one to emerge from the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany: Donald J. Trump announced a joint cyber-security agreement with none other than Vladimir Putin.

That’s it: The president of the United States and the president of Russia agreed in principle to work on ways to prevent governments from hacking into others’ systems.

Oh, but wait! Twelve hours later, Trump tweeted (of course!) a change of heart; we won’t enter into that agreement with Russia after all.

Imagine that. The president backed out totally from an agreement he had his White House communications staff announce to the world.

Intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia hacked our electoral process in 2016. Then the Russian president puts this idea out in his meeting with the U.S. president — who then buys into it.

All the while, Trump keeps dissing our spooks’ expertise on this matter and then sidles up to the government believed to have sought to influence the outcome of our presidential election.

How does a White House staff at any level cope with this kind of capriciousness? How do Cabinet officers know whether to zig or zag as they try to keep the president in their sights?

Is there any wonder at all — having watched this administration stumble, bumble and fumble its way — why the president is having trouble filling so many vacancies?

International news, national news

Did POTUS strengthen U.S. at G20?

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Donald Trump has been home for a couple of days, so it’s good to look back just a bit at his second overseas trip as president of the United States.

Did the president strengthen the U.S. standing in the world? Do our allies and our foes see us as stronger now that Trump is president?

I cannot possibly believe that is the case. Indeed, much of the chatter since the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany has centered on Trump’s isolation from the rest of the world.

He has pulled the United States out of the Paris climate change accord, and has been condemned roundly by virtually every other nation in the world that remains committed to the accord. And get a load of this: The other two nations that didn’t sign on in the first place — Nicaragua and Syria — refused because the accord didn’t go far enough. Trump’s reason? He wants to protect U.S. jobs he said are being harmed by onerous regulations.

Then we have that meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump reportedly “pressed” Putin on reports of Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election. Putin denied it. Then we heard that Trump and Putin had agreed on a joint effort to crack down on cyber-hacking — which is akin to asking Latin American drug lords to craft a plan to stop drug trafficking into the United States.

Trump’s emphasis on “putting America first” isn’t playing well in a world with nations that are increasingly connected. His pre-summit statements about Germany, China, Mexico, Canada and Australia haven’t been forgotten by those countries’ heads of state and government.

Have we restored American greatness on the world stage?

No. Indeed, I believe the president has reduced our once-starring role as the world’s most indispensable nation to second-tier status.

International news, national news

It’s getting smokier in Washington, D.C.

The toughest job in Washington has been handed off from Sean Spicer to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, given that Spicer appears to have been taken off the White House press room briefing detail.

Sanders today sought to tell the media that there is nothing at all wrong with Donald J. Trump Jr. meeting with a Russian lawyer who reportedly told the young man that she had some dirt to pass on about Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that Donald Jr. received an e-mail informing him that the “Russian government” had information about Clinton that would be helpful to the Trump campaign. Thus, the meeting between Donald Jr. and the lawyer occurred. Interesting, yes? I damn sure think so.

Here’s the NY Times story.

Sanders said that campaign officials always meet with individuals or organizations in the heat of a contest. What’s the big deal? Actually, the big deal centers on questions about whether the Trump campaign cooperated with Russians seeking to damage Clinton’s campaign and aid Trump’s winning effort.

The younger Trump says he will cooperate with congressional committees. He has hired a lawyer to help him sort through this mess. He says he has nothing to hide.

You know what? It’s getting a bit smokier and murkier as special counsel Robert Mueller continues his hunt for the truth. Senate and House committees also are firing up their own investigative machinery.

Sarah Sanders’s effort at justifying this meeting that Donald Jr. had with the Russian lawyer, though, has to rank as one of the lamer efforts heard in some time. It does illustrate the difficult task she must perform while speaking on behalf of this dysfunctional administration.

As for the Kremlin and what officials in Moscow are saying about this, they are denying that Donald Jr. even met with the lawyer. Of course the Russians would deny it. I don’t believe Robert Mueller is going to accept the Russians’ version of what happened … or didn’t happen.

Keep looking, Mr. Mueller.

media news, national news

When did ‘fake news’ become what it’s become?

Once upon a lifetime or two ago, back before the Internet or even before the rise of some of current contemporary politicians, I used to think of “fake news” as something that bears little resemblance to what it means today.

That was before we even coined the term “fake news” as it has come to be known these days.

If someone were to present an item as “news,” but it turns out to be false, you’d just call it what it was: a fabrication, a prevarication, a lie. Thanks, though, to an adroit politician — who hates to be called one, even though that is what he is — many of us toss the term “fake news” around recklessly. If it’s negative, it’s “fake.” Even if it tells the truth, it’s “fake” in the eyes of those aligned with the target of such truth-telling.

Donald John Trump, the nation’s 45th president, has now turned the term into something of a rallying cry for the shrinking — but still substantial — base of Americans who still believe what he says.

The president’s standing among Americans is around 38 percent — give or take a point or two — who think he’s doing a good job. The rest of us, um, think a lot less of him. The Trumpkins of this nation glom onto the “fake news” mantra to discredit any news report seen as critical of their guy.

They don’t get the irony, though, of what they say about the media. If you want any clearer example of what I used to think of as “fake news,” you need look no further than the man who’s made it the rallying cry it has become.

Donald Trump is the king of fake news. Call him King Donald the Faker. To wit:

He perpetrated the lie that Barack Obama was constitutionally unqualified to hold the office of president; he cited a phony instance of “thousands of Muslims cheering” the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11; he said President Obama bugged his campaign office after the election; he said “millions of illegal immigrants” voted for Hillary Clinton and gave her the 3 million popular vote plurality she scored over Trump, despite losing the Electoral College vote; he implied there might be White House recordings of conversations he had with fired FBI Director James Comey.

What, I ask, do all these instances have in common? They’re all demonstrably false. They’re lies. They are made up events.

They are “fake news”!

Still, the president gets away with it in the minds of those who stand by their man.

I get that Donald Trump changed the rules of politics when he ran for and won the presidency in 2016. Brother, do I ever get it.

What continues to boggle my mind, though, is the very idea that this guy gets away with hanging the “fake news” label on media and news reports while being cheered on by those who ignore his own tawdry record of dishing out lies.

national news

CIA: former foe of the left becomes its friend

An interesting Internet meme is making the rounds. It says that “real patriots” don’t question when the Central Intelligence Agency says that Russians hacked into our electoral system in 2016.

Now, those of us who are old enough to have lived through a good bit of U.S. history remember something quite different about American attitudes toward the CIA.

The meme to which I referred is intended to take a swipe at conservatives who are siding with Donald J. Trump’s view that the CIA’s intelligence-gathering capability isn’t up to snuff. Think about that for a moment: Liberals are siding with the spooks.

It wasn’t always this way.

Let’s flash back for a moment to the 1970s. The Vietnam War was still raging; a Republican president was about to be re-elected; the CIA was allegedly helping the president develop an “enemies list” that targeted left-wing protesters; then came that burglary at the Watergate office complex; the president then told the CIA to instruct the FBI to back off its probe of the break-in.

The crap hit the fan. The CIA was caught doing something wrong. Liberals cheered; conservatives moaned. The president resigned and it took years for the CIA to wipe its face clean.

More than four decades later, the CIA is still on the job. It is conducting intelligence operations around the world. It is well-run. Indeed, the CIA played a huge role in the mission that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011, an event that brought liberals and conservatives together to cheer the success of that endeavor.

Politics, though, does have this way of ebbing and flowing. We are the point today where the CIA is seen as a valuable watchdog against those who would do harm to our political system.

The CIA — and a few other agencies — have concluded that Russian meddled in our 2016 presidential election. Whether they actually swung the election in Donald Trump’s favor is one of the questions of the moment; I tend to think Trump would have won regardless. That’s not the point.

The point is that they meddled. The CIA has determined they have meddled. A lot of political hands across the spectrum — and that includes progressives/liberals — believe in the CIA analysis. The most prominent denier of all this happens to the Republican president of the United States, the current darling of the conservative movement, the guy who says he wants to “put America first” and to make this country “great again.”

Oh, the winds of change do have this curious way of blowing away old thoughts and bias.