Monthly Archives: October 2017

national news, political news

Hillary didn’t want to attend inaugural? No kiddin’!

Hillary Rodham Clinton has revealed to the BBC what many of us already suspected, if not knew: She didn’t want to attend the inaugural of Donald John Trump.

As The Hill reported: “I really tried to get out of going,” Clinton said in an appearance on BBC One’s “The Graham Norton Show.” “We thought ‘OK, maybe others aren’t going.’ “

Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee who lost to Trump in 2016, told BBC she sought out the family of President Bush 43; they would attend. She sought advice from President and Mrs. Carter; they were going, too. President and Mrs. Obama, of course, had to be there. President and Mrs. Bush 41 couldn’t attend because of the former president’s poor health.

In many ways I can understand Hillary’s reluctance. Trump had insulted her for months prior to Election Day. He didn’t just dispute policy differences with his opponent. Trump chose to belittle her just as he did his Republican primary opponents prior to winning the GOP nomination; some of those GOP foes chose to boycott the party’s nominating convention. I didn’t blame them, either.

According to BBC: Clinton also said she wanted Trump to “rise to the occasion of being our president” during his inaugural address, but said “that didn’t happen” because of Trump’s “dark, divisive speech.”

Yes, it was dark. It was angry. The new president didn’t strike any kind of unifying tone. He spoke only to the base of voters who carried him to victory. He didn’t speak to the rest of us, seeking to tell us he would do all he could be president of all Americans.

I’m glad Hillary accompanied her husband, the former president, to the inaugural. However, if she’d have stayed away, I surely would have accepted that decision, too.

local news

Renaming buildings and streets? Follow a simple formula

Amarillo city officials are considering some ordinances related to building and street renaming.

There’s been a bit of controversy about that in recent times, with Amarillo public school officials considering whether to rename an elementary school that currently is named after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, whose participation in the Civil War has come under scrutiny of late.

Hey, I have one recommendation for Amarillo City Hall: Whatever you decide, be sure to avoid naming a building or street after a living individual.

No living honorees

The city named its administration building in 2014 after the late City Commissioner Jim Simms; it named its international airport after Rick Husband, the astronaut who died aboard the shuttle Columbia in 2003; Amarillo has named part of a street after Justin Scherlen, a police officer who died in the line of duty.

Cities that name structures or streets after living individuals run the risk of being embarrassed by the “honored” individual. The most prominent example that comes to my mind involves Pete Rose, the former Cincinnati Reds baseball great who got a street named in his honor in Cincy; then Rose got ensnared in a gambling scandal that resulted in his being banned for life from induction in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. The city took Rose’s name off the street.

So, go ahead, City Hall, with considering this ordinance. I have no problem with the city having a policy for this process — as long as it involves individuals who have left this world.

Good luck, City Council.

national news

Hoping a lower bar allows for satisfaction

PORTLAND, Ore. — A big day awaits my wife and me.

We ventured to the city of my birth to attend a high school reunion, an event I once swore I’d never attend again for the rest of my life. Not ever. Not in a million, billion, gazillion years!

Here we are.

The 50-year reunion for my high school class will commence in a little more than 24 hours and I am expecting it to produce a significantly different emotional result than the 30-year reunion I attended.

I graduated from Parkrose High School in the Summer of Love; that would be 1967. I took a stab at college, but didn’t make the grade. The U.S. Army beckoned the following year and it sent me to Vietnam, which placed me on the fast track to becoming an actual grownup.

I returned home in August 1970, got married a year after that. My wife and I went to my 10-year reunion in 1977. I skipped No. 20, but flew back to Portland from Amarillo to attend No. 30.

I hated it. I had set the bar far too high. I placed too great an expectation on what I would discover about the people next to whom I sat in class or goofed off with in the hallway or the cafeteria.

One of my sons blamed my disappointment on the absence of my wife at No. 30. He’s a wise man and he’s likely correct that my trip back alone contributed to my lack of satisfaction in the 30-year reunion.

I got invited to No. 40. I chose to skip it for reasons relating directly to the event I attended a decade earlier. I heard from one of my pals who did attend No. 40; he told my wife and me that everyone had a blast. Good deal.

So, my wife and I have ventured here together in our RV.

I will walk into the hotel banquet room with next to zero expectations. My wife and I will catch up with a couple of good friends of mine with whom I’ve stayed in touch over the years. I’ll seek to catch up the best I can with the others. I won’t expect anyone to recall what a great guy I was back in those Glory Days.

I’ll slap a few backs, shake a few hands and perhaps swap a lie or two. Then my wife and I will be on our way.

But you know … these low expectations just might be exceeded by what we encounter. I’m not expecting it. Then again …

International news

Why can’t POTUS speak with this kind of clarity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps5ttDzWBaY

John Kelly works for a guy who seems genetically incapable of speaking with moral certitude and clarity.

When the president speaks about slain soldiers “knowing what they were getting into … but I guess it still hurts,” he comes off sounding like a heartless buffoon.

When the White House chief of staff offers the same explanation over what his “best friend” told him after his son was killed in Afghanistan, he sounds dignified, heartfelt and sincere.

Donald J. Trump has opened the door yet again to a pointless and needless controversy. This time it centers on how the president sought to console a grieving widow whose husband died in a firefight in Niger several days ago.

The president might have been motivated to do the right thing. Perhaps he intended to sound compassionate. My reading of what’s been reported about what he told Myeshia Johnson, whose husband Sgt. La David Johnson, died in Niger, tells me the president just isn’t good at fulfilling that role.

And yet, Gen. Kelly manages to sound the right tone, despite his criticism of Rep. Frederica Wilson, who reported the content of the president’s phone conversation with Mrs. Johnson.

Weird.

education news, local news

Sexual harassment hits all communities

Sexual harassment is in the air. Maybe it’s in the water.

A one-time major-league Hollywood mogul’s career has been destroyed by allegations of his untoward behavior against women.

A “Me Too” movement has emerged, with women coming forward to reveal their own exposure to sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Now a school district at the very top of the Texas Panhandle is dealing with a potentially burgeoning controversy involving sexual harassment. Two top Perryton Independent School District administrators — Superintendent Robert Hall and Assistant Superintendent Keith Langfitt — have resigned. Both men had been accused of sexual harassment. They both were on paid administrative leave.

I am going to take a leap here and suggest that their resignations likely mean there had to be merit to the allegations that had been leveled against them.

The details of the complaints remain sketchy. I hope the school district will reveal the nature of the allegations leveled against these two men. I am not suggesting that Perryton ISD officials reveal the names of the victims of the activity that’s being alleged.

The community, though, would be well-served if it learns about what was going on in secret in a publicly funded institution that has such a direct impact on the lives of taxpayers — and their children.

national news

For ‘W’ to speak out, you know it’s bad

Two former presidents of the United States have spoken out about the state of contemporary politics.

Both men’s comments were thinly veiled broadsides fired at Donald John Trump, the guy who succeeded one of them. You would expect such criticism of a Republican president to come from Democratic former President Barack H. Obama, who today campaigned on behalf of fellow Democratic candidates.

It’s the criticism that came from a Republican ex-president, George W. Bush, that deserves a brief comment here.

President Bush has been mostly quiet since leaving the White House in January 2009. Today he broke his silence in dramatic fashion.

Speaking at a George W. Bush Institute event in New York, the former president said this, according to the Washington Post:

* “Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”

* “We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism.”

* “We’ve seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. . . . Argument turns too easily into animosity.”

* “It means that bigotry and white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed, and it means the very identity of our nation depends on passing along civic ideals.”

* “Bullying and prejudice in our public life … provides permission for cruelty and bigotry.”

* “The only way to pass along civic values is to live up to them.”

Read the Post article here.

Can there be any question about whom the former president is referring? Can you possibly mistake the references to anyone other than Donald J. Trump?

President Bush spoke out forcefully during his time in the White House against bigotry and hatred. For example, he sought to declare that our war against international radical Islamic terrorists is not a war against Islam.

That is not the message we’re getting from the current president and the 43rd president of the United States is correct to bring these issues to our attention.

Welcome back to the political stage, Mr. President.

national news

It all starts at the top

I happen to admire John Kelly greatly. The White House chief of staff is a man of tremendous honor who has served his country — our country — with distinction and valor.

The retired Marine Corps general has given too much. His son died on an Afghanistan battlefield, which hands him the title of Gold Star father. Gen. Kelly spoke with great eloquence today in talking about a phone call that Donald Trump made to the widow of a soldier who was killed in an ambush in Niger. He praised the president and expressed “shock” and “heartbreak” that a member of Congress would discuss publicly the content of that phone call.

I want to disagree with great respect to Gen. Kelly on a particular point, however. The president of the United States — Kelly’s boss — is the man who made this a public issue. It was Trump who stated that previous presidents didn’t generally call the loved ones who died in battle.

So, we can debate whether Rep. Frederica Wilson spoke out of turn. We can argue over the propriety of her to interject herself into this highly sensitive and emotional issue.

However, as is his habit, the president chose to make this an issue in the first place because of his own untrue statements regarding how his immediate predecessors performed the heart-wrenching task of serving as commander in chief.

national news

Gold Star controversy boils up again

Donald J. Trump has a consistent problem with Gold Star families, indeed he seems to have similar problems with men and women who’ve served in combat.

Do you recall in the summer of 2016 how he told the parents of a young American killed in Iraq that they “had no right” to criticize Trump over his views of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East? The parents happen to be Muslim, as was their son, an officer in the U.S. Army.

He once said that Sen. John McCain was a “war hero” only because he was captured by the North Vietnamese after his jet fighter was shot down. “I like people who aren’t captured, OK?” he said.

Trump contended falsely that previous presidents didn’t call the families of warriors slain in battle.

Now he’s reportedly told the wife of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in Niger, that Sgt. Johnson “knew what he was getting into, but it still hurts.” The president has bristled at a congresswoman who said she heard Trump say it.

Do you see a pattern here?

I just cannot fathom what prevents the president from saying simply this: Please know that our nation grieves with you. We feel deeply for the pain you are suffering and we appreciate beyond measure the sacrifice your son/daughter has made in defense of the nation.

He cannot do that. He apparently is not wired with the empathy or compassion gene. Trump turns everything back to himself. He makes himself the story, either by design or by clumsy incompetence.

We are witnessing yet another manifestation of this man’s unfitness for the job to which he was elected.

Presidents are expected to deliver words of comfort. They are expected to serve as nation’s consoler in chief. Americans expect this — among other things —  from their head of state.

Donald Trump keeps failing to deliver.

Astounding.

national news

Happy Trails, Part 49

PORTLAND, Ore. — Our retirement journey has brought us to where our lives together began nearly 47 years ago.

It was a rocky landing, though. It had nothing to do with my wife and me, or our relationship per se.

It had to do with an RV park where had reserved space.

We had intended to stay at an RV location in Vancouver, Wash., across the mighty Columbia River from Portland, where I was born and where I spent the first 34 years of my life.

I called ahead from Eugene, where we spent the previous night. We made the reservation. The young woman told us all she had left were “back-in” sites. Fine. Let’s reserve it, I said. She told me the space was “tight, but no one has any trouble” backing in.

All righty. We arrived at the RV park. We paid for our reservation. e drove our truck and our RV to the site. Tight fit? Uh, yeah. It was. It was so damn tight, we couldn’t get the RV/truck assembly positioned correctly to back it in. The spaces were packed like sardines.

I am not yet an expert at backing in our fifth wheel, but I am not a complete novice/dunderhead, either. I couldn’t get it to fit. A young man who works part time at the RV park took the wheel of our pickup. He couldn’t get it right, either. He had to leave to pick up his girlfriend.

My wife and I looked at each other. Then she spoke words of wisdom: Did we want to stay there or try to find another location … somewhere? We went to the office and read the riot act to the young lady, the one who told me “no one has any trouble” maneuvering their RV into these back-in sites.

The lady made an offer. “We can reserve a spot for you at a sister site in Portland, Oregon.” She called ahead. They had pull-through sites available. We could get in for the cost of our stay at the Vancouver RV park.

Deal! Done! Let’s do it.

So, we did. The Portland site was just a few minutes away.

The lesson? It came from my wife: Never again are we going to reserve a back-in site at a private RV park. State parks are OK. We’ve discovered that the Texas state park system, for example, has ample space for back-in sites.

The journey now can continue.

military news

He said it, she said it; who’s telling the truth?

Wouldn’t you know it …

There’s no record of a conversation that Donald Trump had with the widow of a soldier killed in action in Niger. Another party to the conversation, a Florida congresswoman, has accused the president of being insensitive while talking to the wife of the fallen soldier.

It’s become a classic he said/she said standoff.

Who’s lying here?

In one corner we have the president, Donald John Trump Sr., a man known to fib, lie, prevaricate at a moment’s notice. He blurts things out without attribution, documentation or evidence.

In the other corner we have U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., who contends she was in on the phone call between Trump and Myeshia Johnson, the wife of slain soldier Sgt. David Johnson. Trump reportedly said that Sgt. Johnson, one of four Special Forces soldiers ambushed by terrorists in Niger, “knew what he signed up for … but it still hurts.”

But you see, there’s no record of the conversation. We’re left with the words of two individuals — president and the congresswoman — with apparently little regard for each other.

We haven’t yet heard from Myeshia Johnson, who could clear this matter up with corroboration for either Trump or Wilson.

Short of that: polygraphs anyone?