Monthly Archives: November 2017

legal news, national news, political news

‘Fine-tuned machine’ needs a serious lube job

The president of the United States has described his administration as functioning like a “fine-tuned machine.”

Such a description implies a thorough vetting of those seeking high-level government appointments, yes? Sure it does.

Why, then, did a Donald Trump nominee for the federal bench fail to report something that poses a potential conflict of interest? You know, that he is married to a senior White House lawyer.

Brett Talley failed to disclose that he is married to Ann Donaldson. Talley wants to be a federal judge; Donaldson works for an organization — the White House — that could face a challenge and appear in the very court where Talley presides.

Mr. President, we have a problem

Doggone it, man. Isn’t that a problem? What’s more, why didn’t Donaldson step forward and inform the White House judge-search team that there might be a problem with her hubby being seated on the federal bench?

And there’s an interesting back story, too. Talley wants an appointment to a judgeship that serves a district in Alabama, which is being tossed and roiled at this very moment by a scandal involving Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate who’s being accused of making improper sexual advances on underage girls.

Aw, what the heck. I digress … you know?

Talley also has never tried a case. His legal experience is quite limited and one can question whether he actually is qualified to preside as a federal judge.

Is this how the president finds the “best people” to serve the federal government? Is this how a “fine-tuned machine” operates?

Umm. No.

national news

‘Political hacks’ strike back at Trump

Donald John Trump showed his stripes yet again over the weekend.

So help me, the president sickens me constantly.

He met with Vladimir Putin in Da Nang, Vietnam. They shook hands. Trump and Putin had a brief meeting. Putin said he didn’t interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump said that he accepted Putin’s denial on its face.

Then the idiot in chief called former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper “political hacks” because they have asserted that the Russians did interfere with our electoral process.

Can you imagine how Republicans would react if, say, Barack Obama had called two distinguished American intelligence officers “political hacks”?

Brennan and Clapper, of course, weren’t taking the president’s disparagement lightly. They have scolded him seriously, suggesting that Putin is “playing” Trump like a fiddle.

Trump did attempt to walk back his comments about Putin’s phony denial, but he managed to botch that as well, saying he backs the U.S. intelligence community, while continuing to suggest that Putin is “sincere” in his denial of election interference.

Sigh.

Oh, so very sad.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 54

We have passed an important milestone on our retirement journey.

The place we called “home” for 21 years is now just a house. It’s a building. It’s making feel vaguely strange to think of it in those terms, but that’s what happens when we move on to the next big adventure.

Our southwest Amarillo home is now virtually all packed up. It’s full of boxes and big pieces of furniture. I walk into it to do more work and are filled with this a mixture of bittersweet feelings.

The sweetness comes with the knowledge that we are going to move to a new location somewhere near our granddaughter … and, of course, her parents and her brothers. The bitterness is part of the realization that the place where hung our hats for more than two decades — far longer than anywhere else either of us ever have lived — no longer is our “home.”

Don’t misconstrue that the “bitter” part of the bittersweetness. It’s only a minor element. We didn’t rear our sons there. We moved to Amarillo when our boys were in college. One of them moved here after graduating from college in 1995; the other son stayed in Dallas after his graduation from college.

But I do have two specific memories of living there. They occurred early on.

Our first Christmas, three days after closing on the purchase in December 1996 is one of them. We spent the holiday unpacking boxes and rediscovering items we had kept in storage for nearly two years after moving to Amarillo in early 1995. The other memory occurred on Valentine’s Day weekend 1997, when we took delivery on fescue sod which my wife and I laid down on our yard. I remain quite proud of the job we did that weekend. Not very romantic, but it surely was productive.

But that was then. Today we are moving at an accelerating pace toward the next big step in our life journey together.

I am anxious and ready.

national news

Cruz bolts from Roy Moore camp

The Cruz Missile has just scored a direct hit on Roy Moore.

I refer to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican firebrand, who has pulled his support from the Alabama GOP Senate candidate who’s being swallowed up by a sex scandal.

The way I figure it, if Ted Cruz no longer can support Moore, then things must be going really badly for the guy who wants to join the U.S. Senate.

Moore is caught up in a growing scandal that alleges he had improper relations with underage girls many years ago. Several women have come forward to say he made improper advances to them when they were underage and he was in his 30s.

Sen. Cruz says he no longer can support Moore and adds that if the allegations brought forth by several women are true, he should be prosecuted on criminal charges. Cruz said, “Both last week and this week, there are serious charges of criminal conduct that if true, not only make him unfit to serve in the Senate but merit criminal prosecution.”

And the hits just keep on coming.

national news

Moore scandal threatens to blow up GOP

The Roy Moore scandal is the gift that keeps on giving … for bloggers such as yours truly.

Moore well might get elected to the U.S. Senate — despite being accused of making improper sexual advances on several underage girls. His opponent is Democrat Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama; Moore is the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Here’s the latest and the greatest: Moore’s possible election could result in his being expelled by the Senate. Republicans don’t want anything to do with a guy who would take office under a sinister cloud of seedy suspicion.

Several GOP senators are calling for Moore to step down. They want him out of the campaign. The Senate’s main Republican, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, believes the accusers and says Moore needs to go … away!

Others are suggesting that the battle between McConnell and Moore symbolizes the ideological rift that is dividing the Republican Party. It’s the Establishment vs. the Outliers.

Expulsion is fraught with peril

Some GOP senators want to expel Moore. Others aren’t so sure that’s a good idea. Some are suggesting that any effort to expel Moore could energize his support in Alabama and propel him to victory over Jones.

I know I don’t have a vote, but I’ll just reiterate that Roy Moore shouldn’t be elected to the Senate, the accusations notwithstanding. He’s a crackpot religious zealot who doesn’t respect the secular nature of the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, Moore’s constant reciting of his “Christian values” on the campaign stump makes the accusations against him so damning and potentially damaging.

Moore insists he is staying in the race for the duration. It that’s the way it is going to be, then we’ll just have to let the battle continue — and let the gift just keep on giving.

political news

Say it ain’t so, Joe

It pains me to say this, but I must reiterate what I believe remains the case to this day.

Democrats need not look to old warhorses to salvage their political fortunes, which means to me that former Vice President Joe Biden shouldn’t be a candidate for his party’s presidential nomination in 2020.

I say this despite my affection and respect for the former vice president. I’ve long admired his tenacity, his passionate patriotism and his sense of collegiality and comity. He served in the U.S. Senate for 36 years before joining the Democratic Party ticket led in 2008 by his Senate colleague, Barack H. Obama.

I believe still that Democrats need to find a newcomer to the national scene. I believe also that the nation has become afflicted with Clinton Fatigue, which means Hillary Clinton also is out of the presidential political game.

It appears to me that Democrats would do well to look for someone who is as unknown to the public as Jimmy Carter was in 1976. The nation was starved back then for a fresh face and they got one when the former Georgia governor climbed to the top of the party’s primary fight.

Vice President Biden has said publicly that he hasn’t ruled out a 2020 run. He was thought to be a possible candidate in 2016, but at the end had to stand down, given his intense grief over the death of his son Beau and his inability to commit fully to a presidential campaign.

Biden has been openly critical of Donald John Trump. Hmmm. Imagine that. So have many others. The ex-VP has spoken out strongly, much like another former veep — Dick Cheney — did during much of President Obama’s time in office.

But I don’t believe a Biden presidential campaign is going to serve the party well. Democrats would do well to find a fresh face, with fresh ideas to challenge a Republican Party that has been hijacked by a president who came into power knowing not a damn thing about how to govern the greatest nation on Earth.

religious news

Oh, yeah, and Mary was a virgin, too

The Amarillo Globe-News published a brief editorial today that takes to task an Alabama Republican politician who sought to defend embattled fellow Republican Roy Moore against accusations that he made improper sexual advances on a 14-year-old girl.

Here’s what the G-N published:

The recent statement by Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler in reference to the scandal surrounding GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore is wrong on many counts.

However, we will stick to one — it is historically wrong, at least according to the Bible.

Zeigler invoked the relationship between Mary and Joseph as some sort of reason not to criticize Moore, who has been accused of sexual assault against a 14-year-old girl decades ago when Moore was in his 30s.

In the Bible, specific ages are not provided for Mary and Joseph, although it can be assumed Mary was a teenager at the time she gave birth to Jesus.

According to Jewish customs at that time, men were also typically young when they were “betrothed.” Therefore, it is quite likely Joseph was not much older than Mary.

The editorial, I need to mention, omits a critical element about Mary and Joseph. It is that Scripture tells us that Mary was a virgin. She and Joseph didn’t produce the child she was carrying, according to the New Testament.

And that, in my mind, makes the Alabama auditor’s “defense” of Roy Moore even more ridiculous.

national news, political news

Roy Moore’s non-denial adds to suspicion

Roy Moore is getting buried under a pile of political doo-doo.

The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Alabama is trying to fend off accusations that he made an improper and illegal sexual advance on a 14-year-old girl in 1979; Moore was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney at the time of the alleged incident.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate are calling for Moore to quit the campaign. Democrats, too, but that’s no surprise.

Now comes this strange non-denial from Moore, a champion of the morally strict wing of the GOP. Questions have arisen in the past two days or so that Moore was fond of dating high school students when he was a grown man, a 30-something lawyer. How did Moore respond to that accusation?

By saying that he didn’t date those young girls “as a general rule.”

Huh? What the hey? As a general rule? What in the world does that mean? Did he date the girls on occasion?

I believe therein might lie the problem with Moore’s response to these allegations. Congressional Republicans are placing greater value in the accusations that have come from several women who’ve backed the initial allegation leveled by Leigh Corfman, who’s now 53 years of age. Those accusations are more credible, they say, than Moore’s strange denial.

For the life of me I don’t know how this guy can serve in the Senate if he manages to win the election on Dec. 12 against Democratic opponent Doug Jones.

Republican leaders in the Senate don’t want anything to do with this guy.

But he’s hanging on. He’s planning to finish this campaign. He calls the allegations a hit job by Democrats and the “fake news” media that are reporting it.

I believe he should quit the campaign.

Then he should disappear from public life.

medical news

Bill Gates takes on Alzheimer’s disease

I want to take a break from commenting on people for whom I have zero respect and toss a bouquet at someone who has earned tons of gratitude and appreciation.

Bill Gates is the world’s richest human being. He has announced he is going to kick in $50 million — which in reality is essentially walking-around money for someone worth roughly a hundred times that amount — for Alzheimer’s research.

Hey, I am not going to give the Microsoft founder the short shrift on this gift. It’s valuable and it well could lead to a cure for an incredibly cruel and heartless disease.

Gates is giving the money to the Dementia Discovery Fund, based in London. It is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States. Its impact affects not just those it robs cognitive skill, but also the loved ones of those who afflicted by this terrible killer.

Disease hits close to the heart

I know of what I speak.

My own dear mother died at the age of 61 in 1984 of Alzheimer’s-related complications. A neurologist delivered the formal diagnosis in the spring of 1980, which she was just 56. In truth, she had been exhibiting signs of behavior change for years prior to the doctor’s grim news.

Believe me when I say this: Watching someone you love lose his or her very being is as painful an experience as one can endure. That’s what happened to Mom. She forgot how to sign her name; she couldn’t dress herself; she couldn’t bathe herself; eventually, she lost her ability to speak.

It’s not pretty.

Bill Gates wants to contribute tens of millions of dollars to help finance research that can lead to a cure for his monstrous killer. It’s the first such contribution that Gates has made to a non-communicable disease; he has been giving money for years for HIV/AIDS research.

I know my and family and are far from alone in this struggle against Alzheimer’s disease. Others have gone through the misery we have suffered. I am quite certain they, too, are grateful for Gates’ contribution to this noble effort.

This man is a champion. I appreciate beyond measure his huge gift.

business news, local news

Just wondering: Amarillo Matters … where is it?

1 Comment

A political action group emerged from nowhere earlier this year. It called itself Amarillo Matters. Its mission, as I understand it, was to elect a slate of candidates to the City Council.

It succeeded. This past spring, voters flipped the entire five-member council, electing five newbies. Amarillo Matters then seemingly packed its bags, and its members went back to whatever they were doing before they formed this political action committee.

They were mostly successful businessmen and women. Their agenda included electing individuals who shared their pro-business tilt. Hey, I have no problem with that.

There’s been some success in the months since the new council members took office. Chief among them is the landing of that AA minor-league baseball franchise that is relocating to Amarillo from San Antonio and will play baseball at the new ballpark that will be built in downtown Amarillo; they’ll toss the first pitch in April 2019.

That’s a big deal, man.

But what has become of Amarillo Matters? It’s no longer garnering headlines, or any discussion on local broadcast media. I looked at its website this evening. It’s still up. AM has a link where one can contribute money; I am not giving them any dough.

I’ve written plenty about them already:

https://highplainsblogger.com/?s=Amarillo+Matters

Given that I am unplugged from most of what’s going on at City Hall these days, I am left to use this blog to pose questions about some of the community’s key players.

I consider Amarillo Matters to be an important cog in the city’s civic machinery. I know many of the folks who formed the PAC’s leadership team earlier this year. I respect them, too.

I hope it hasn’t become what the Amarillo Millennial Movement turned out to be: a flash in the pan. AMM formed to promote the approval of the ballpark in the November 2015 municipal referendum. The measure passed — and AMM then vanished, vaporized, disappeared. Yes, I am aware that the AMM comprised essentially one individual, a young woman who moved to Fort Worth. But you get my point, yes?

Amarillo Matters, where are you and what are you doing to make sure that that Amarillo still, um, matters?