Monthly Archives: July 2017

business news, entertainment news

Not just a ‘mall’

MINNEAPOLIS — Many of you have seen something like this already. If so, then just bear with me for a moment as I share this brief note about something I’d heard about but had never seen up close and personal.

The Mall of America sits right across the highway from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. We came here during the middle of a work week. The place was packed. I am led to believe, therefore, that this shopping extravaganza is some sort of destination for travelers.

It’s likely the largest shopping mall on Planet Earth. And, oh man, it is an impressive display of conspicuous consumption.

We walked into the heart of the Mall of America and noticed a Ferris wheel, a zip line, a roller coaster and assorted other smaller rides for the hundreds of children running around the place like little banshees.

My wife and I came here to visit my cousin and her husband. The Mall of America was on their list of sights to see. I normally am not a “mall guy,” but this place is utterly breathtaking. It’s not that it’s a marvelous place to, um, shop. It’s the size of the place that is so damn stunning.

A friend of mine who used to write for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune once called the Mall of America “the place that covers all of southern Minnesota.” I am beginning to believe that description is closer to the truth than I ever expected.

We had lunch at a noisy restaurant. Walked around the place a bit and then left.

Shopping malls are meant, I always thought, to provide a place for folks to buy all different types of merchandise under one roof.

But … zip lines and roller coasters? Holy cow!

legal news, national news, Sports news

O.J. gets parole; now, just disappear, will ya?

The Nevada state parole board did what most experts thought it would do: It granted Orenthal James Simpson parole after serving about nine years in the slammer.

O.J. Simpson was sent to The Joint for a crime unrelated to another one for which he was acquitted — and which the vast majority of Americans believe he committed. A jury convicted Simpson of assault, theft and assorted other felonies relating to his effort to recover some sports memorabilia.

The other crime? The one for which he was found not guilty? That was the double murder of his former wife and her friend.

OK. Simpson gets paroled. He’ll have to behave himself while he walks among the rest of us. If he messes up, he goes back to prison.

What I wish now is for Simpson to vanish. I want him away from the public glare. He’ll get a chance to cash in on that $25,000 monthly pension he gets from the National Football League. He was, after all, once a damn good football player.

I also believe he was guilty of the crime for which he was acquitted. That has no bearing, though, on the parole board’s decision to set him free.

I just want the media to turn to other matters. Indeed, I am hoping that this is the final thing I’ll ever write about O.J. Simpson.

Now, O.J.? Get to work looking for the “real killer” of Nicole and Ron.

medical news, national news, political news

Take the hint, Mitch: Nation hates Trumpcare

Memo to Mitch McConnell: Give it up on trying to resurrect the Senate Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.

The word now from the U.S. Senate majority leader is that he is going to reopen negotiations on the failed GOP plan. He is trying to woo Republicans who (a) oppose the legislation or (b) are straddling the fence.

McConnell could not muster up the 50 votes he needed to approve the Senate plan. GOP conservatives hate it because it too much of the ACA; GOP moderates hate it because it casts too many Americans off the rolls of the insured.

The nation’s Republican in chief, Donald Trump, is refusing to “own” the GOP caucus failure.

One final point: Public opinion polls show a 17 percent approval rating for the Republican plan.

Hey, who needs those stinkin’ polls, right, Mr. Majority Leader?

McConnell is fueled by this desire, or so it seems, to rid the law of anything with Barack H. Obama’s name on it. Recall that he said right after Obama’s election that his “No. 1 priority” was to make Obama a one-term president.

He’s now gunning for a consolation prize, which is to toss the ACA into the crapper.

Pay attention, Mr. Leader: Your plan is no better in the eyes of Americans who now have health insurance for the first time in their lives. You and your fellow Republican senators work for them — for us, sir! You need to do our bidding.

Uncategorized

McCain has earned bipartisan praise and good wishes

I feel like sharing this 10-minute video from the 2008 Al Smith Memorial Dinner.

It features U.S. Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party’s nominee for president of the United States. He brought the house down with his good-natured barbs at his “friend and colleague” Sen. Barack Obama. His comments also were laced a healthy measure of self-deprecation.

The Al Smith dinner is a quadrennial event that brings the two major-party nominees together to raise money to benefit the Catholic Church’s good work.

Given the terribly sad news about Sen. McCain’s cancer diagnosis and the outpouring of support from across the political spectrum, I thought I’d share this video to illustrate how politics need not be so full of hate.

This is for you, Sen. McCain.

national news, political news

Time for you to quit, Mr. Attorney General

If I read Donald Trump’s comments about Attorney General Jeff Sessions correctly, it appears the president is pretty damn angry at the man he picked to lead the Department of Justice.

It also looks as though Trump’s confidence in his AG has vanished, which suggests to me that it’s time for the attorney general to hit the road.

The president has broken sharply with one of his earliest U.S. Senate supporters, saying he never would have picked Sessions if the attorney general would recuse himself from a deepening investigation into Trump’s connections with Russian government officials. Actually, Sessions’s recusal was one of the more noble aspects of his time as AG, given that he couldn’t possibly be trusted to be impartial and unbiased as he was a key player in Trump’s transition team after the 2016 election.

Trump is showing signs of extreme anxiety as the special counsel’s investigation picks up momentum. Indeed, the president also said in an interview with the New York Times that the counsel, Robert Mueller, must stay away from the Trump family financial issues as he pursues the facts behind the so-called “Russia thing.”

As for Sessions, he can’t do his job as the nation’s top legal eagle. The man who appointed now appears to have lost faith in him because he decided to do the right thing by recusing himself. Beyond all of that, his own testimony before Senate committee members has been rife with holes and has produced seemingly more questions than answers about his own role in the Russia matter.

And so … the mystery deepens and the crisis continues.

national news

‘Give it hell,’ Sen. McCain

I’ve opposed many of John McCain’s public policy pronouncements over the years. None of that opposition, though, has stood in the way of my admiration for him as a dedicated public servant who brought a hero’s stature to his service in the U.S. Senate.

Sen. McCain, the Arizona Republican, is now in the fight of his life.

Doctors removed a blood clot from near his eye and now have revealed that the veteran lawmaker is suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer.

His daughter Meghan calls him the “toughest person” she’s ever known. Tributes have poured in from throughout the nation, across the political chasm that divides the nation.

Donald Trump and his wife, first lady Melania Trump, sent their  “thoughts and prayers.” Former Presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush sent their heartfelt prayers as well.

Barack Obama, with whom Sen. McCain tussled as the two men ran for the presidency in 2008 and while Obama served two terms as president, said this in a message via Twitter: “John McCain is an American hero & one of the bravest fighters I’ve ever known. Cancer doesn’t know what it’s up against. Give it hell, John.”

Check out the messages to Sen. McCain.

He earned his hero status the hard way by being shot down during the Vietnam War and by being held captive for more than five years by North Vietnam. He was tortured, beaten to within inches of his life, denied medical treatment for the injuries he suffered when his plane crashed into a lake in downtown Hanoi.

But he persevered. He struggled. He fought back.

As President Obama said, “Cancer doesn’t know what it’s up against.”

John McCain became a national figure the moment he entered Congress and he has served the nation with honor.

We’re pulling for you, senator.

local news, national news, State news

Kinky had the right idea

I dug out a blog item I posted in July 2010. It was a brief piece quoting former Texas gubernatorial candidate and current writer/musician/humorist Kinky Friedman.

Kinky said he opposed building a wall along our southern border.

I wrote this seven years ago: “I just heard him tell a TV interviewer that the nation’s first order of business is to secure the border. True enough. But then the humorist, author and former Texas gubernatorial candidate — he ran for governor in 2006 as an independent candidate — went a step further.

“He opposes building a fence along the southern border, an idea getting some traction among Republicans. Why not build a fence? ‘The way things are going in this country,’ Friedman said, ‘we may want to get out.’”

Now, Kinky Friedman’s shtick is as a humorist. Thus, it is difficult to take everything he says seriously.

Then again, he seems to have been ahead of his time.

I had the pleasure of interviewing him when he ran for Texas governor in 2006. I was editorial page editor for the Amarillo Globe-News and he came to the Panhandle to be interviewed by our editorial board. He sought our endorsement. I don’t recall in that interview ever mentioning Donald J. Trump’s name to Friedman; nor do I recall him ever bringing up the name of the future president of the United States.

But you know, his statement then does seem to have a strange ring of truth today as we watch the president make an utter hash out of damn near everything he touches.

Yeah, I do miss Kinky Friedman.

medical news, national news

Yep, Trump isn’t your ‘normal’ president

Donald J. Trump more or less vowed to be an unconventional president while he campaigned for the office. Man, he’s made good on that one, eh?

Consider what he said after the failure of the Republican caucus in the Senate to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

“I won’t own” the failure, he said. He wants to let the ACA fail and then he’ll swoop in to clean up the mess — assuming, of course, that it even happens.

How disgraceful.

President Truman famously had that sign on his Oval Office desk: “The Buck Stops Here.” President Kennedy told us after the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961 that “victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan”; he took the hickey for the invasion’s failure. President Reagan admitted to making a mistake during the Iran-Contra controversy, that he didn’t believe “in my heart” that he was trading arms to a hostile nation; he “owned” it eventually.

The current president? He’s not standing by the stumble-bum effort in Congress to enact this legislation. Republicans had seven years to come up with an alternative to the ACA, which they despise largely — or so it seems — because it has Barack H. Obama’s name on it. They call it “Obamacare” as a term of derision.

They blew it. As head of the Republican Party, so did the president. He owns this mistake, whether he cares to admit it or not.

Presidents Truman, Kennedy and Reagan all knew how to stand behind their failures. They all understood that the terms of the office they required them to do so.

Aw, but what the hell. They were just your normal run-of-the-mill politicians who played by the rules. The current president doesn’t operate under the same precept of full accountability.

environmental news

Gore was ‘wrong’ about Trump

Albert Gore Jr. must possess a bottomless wellspring of hope in his soul.

The former vice president told Stephen Colbert this week that he had hoped Donald J. Trump would change his mind regarding his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate change accord.

He has given up. The former VP says on Colbert’s late-night talk show that Trump is beyond redemption regarding climate change, which has been Gore’s signature issue since leaving the vice presidency in January 2001.

According to The Hill: “I went to Trump Tower after the election,” said Gore, who was on the show to promote his new movie, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.”

“I thought that there was a chance he would come to his senses. But I was wrong.”

The former vice president perhaps can take some solace in the belief — at least I believe it — that Trump doesn’t understand climate change or that he doesn’t grasp the theories floated by scientists around the world that human activity is a major cause of the planet’s changing climate.

Science means nothing to the reality TV celebrity-turned-president of the United States.

It doesn’t make Al Gore feel any better, to be sure. Perhaps his wellspring of hope is diminished somewhat as it regards the president of the United States.

International news, legal news, national news, political news

Obstruction of justice, anyone? Anyone?

James Comey believes that Donald J. Trump has obstructed justice.

That is the conclusion of a legal analyst who’s been following “the Russia thing” as closely as anyone in the United States of America.

Comey is the former FBI director whom the president fired because, according to Jeffrey Toobin, Comey declined to pledge complete loyalty to the president. Comey’s agency was conducting an investigation into whether Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russian government officials who are believed to have hacked into our nation’s electoral process.

Toobin’s article appeared in The New Yorker. He lays out what Comey would tell the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Here’s The New Yorker article.

I encourage you to read it.

So many questions to be asked. So many answers yet to be found.

Something tells me the roughest part of the ride awaits the president and his embattled team.