Monthly Archives: November 2017

national news

Indictments ratchet up weirdness factor

Paul Manafort is under house arrest after being indicted for money laundering and conspiracy in connection with Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.

The former Trump campaign chairman, though, reportedly has engaged in some seriously weird travel behavior.

Court filings have revealed that Manafort has three U.S. passports, all under different names. He reportedly traveled abroad under aliases.

It makes me wonder: Who in the world does that?

I get that Manafort is a wealthy man, as Rick Gates, a campaign deputy who also has been indicted by the grand jury impaneled by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating that so-called “Russia thing.” I also get that rich people do things with which I am unfamiliar.

For instance, I possess just one passport. It has my actual name, my actual date of birth and my actual statement that I am an American citizen. I present it when I travel abroad. Passport officials look at it, stamp it and send me on my way.

Financial holdings also questioned

CNN reports as well that Manafort revealed differing estimates of his net worth, as did Gates.

Both men have pleaded not guilty to the assorted money laundering and conspiracy charges. They now are entitled to mount vigorous defenses to uphold their not-guilty pleas.

I have to wonder, however: What in the world gives with the multiple passports and fake names?

Sports news

Houston, you have reason to cheer

I’ll get this off my chest right off the top: I am not a huge fan of the Houston Astros, who’ve just won the 2017 World Series of baseball.

I am, however, cheering mightily — if quietly at this late hour — for the city of Houston, which has suffered grievously at the hand of Mother Nature.

Hurricane Harvey inundated Houston, along with the Golden Triangle, where my family and I lived for nearly 11 years before we moved to the High Plains of Texas. We have many friends in Beaumont and in Houston.

They’ve been through hell, along with millions of other Gulf Coast residents.

Tonight, though, they are smiling because the Astros won the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Astros have won the first Series in franchise history. That’s a 55-year drought!

Houston needs this win to help lift its spirits. It is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Harvey’s wrath. Tonight, though, my guess is that the daunting recovery seems a little less so as Houston and Gulf Coast baseball fans celebrate the Astros’ biggest win in their history.

national news, political news

Impeachment talk heats up prematurely

I’ve made no secret of my loathing of Donald John Trump Sr.

I still believe he is unfit for the office of president of the United States. Furthermore, I believe he has disgraced his high office and has embarrassed the nation he was elected to govern.

Do I believe he should be removed from that office? Yes, either by election or by some other extraordinary means, such as impeachment.

However, the talk of impeachment that reportedly is getting hotter by the week — if not by the day — is a good bit premature.

Some congressional Democrats aren’t waiting for the special counsel, Robert Mueller, to finish his job. They want Trump’s scalp now. One Democrat, Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, believes that Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville, Va., riot in which the president equated white supremacists with those who protested against them is enough of a reason to impeach the president.

Hey, folks. Impeaching the president is the most politically dangerous thing the House of Representatives can do. I get that the House doesn’t need any official findings to launch an impeachment. President Clinton was impeached because he messed around with a young female White House intern; House Republicans said the real reason was that he lied under oath to a grand jury about it.

I maintain — as I have all along — that House members need to wait for Mueller’s investigation into the “Russia thing” runs its course, even if it lasts well into the 2018 congressional election season. Mueller already has indicted three members of Trump’s campaign team, including its former chairman Paul Manafort. There appears to be much more to follow.

So, with that, let’s cool the impeachment talk while the special counsel goes about his arduous task of cobbling together a highly complicated finding of fact.

As The Hill reported: It is not, obviously, off the table at some time in the future, but is premature at this point in time,” Rep. Steny Hoyer, the House minority whip, told reporters last month.

If something emerges that rises to the level of an “impeachable offense,” I happen to believe Robert Mueller and his crack legal team will hand it to Congress.

local news

Puppy Tales, Part 40

I already have declared Toby the Puppy to be the all-time greatest road warrior in the history of doghood. I also have proclaimed him to be the smartest, best-behaved and cutest puppy as well.

He joined our family slightly more than three years ago and he has blessed my wife and me daily ever since. He has made us laugh every single day since our great-niece brought him home Labor Day Weekend 2014 after finding him curled up next to a Dumpster in an alley.

Toby’s understanding of the English language, however, has taken a new turn. It occurred to us while we were on our three-week RV trip from Texas to Oregon and then back.

I occasionally turn in for the night first. I did so fairly routinely on our 4,200-mile journey out west.

I would fall into bed and then my wife would say to Toby, “OK, Puppy, go on to bed and snuggle with Daddy.” At that, Toby would jump down off his mother’s lap, scamper across the floor, jump into bed and curl up next to my legs. I would throw a blanket over him and that’s that. Lights out for Toby.

I want to bring this up to illustrate that my wife spoke to our puppy in a complete sentence. He understood it. He then responded appropriately.

It reminds me of how Lassie would respond to Timmy’s distress calls, how the boy would tell the dog to fetch Mom and Dad and rescue him from the well. Or how Rin Tin Tin would aid the soldiers from Fort Apache, alerting them on where the Indians were waiting to ambush them.

OK, I exaggerate, but you get my point, yes?

I don’t expect TV studios to call us while looking for the next Super Dog to cast in a series. For one thing, they don’t make those kinds of TV shows these days.

Then again, if studio moguls are interested, I’ve got just the puppy.

local news, political news, State news

Early vote turnout ‘just dismal’ … oh, really?

Randall and Potter County election officials say the early voter turnout for next Tuesday’s statewide election is miserable in the extreme.

Only about 3 percent of the registered voters in both counties have bothered to cast ballots for the Texas constitutional amendments that will be decided.

Wow! Who knew? Actually, many of us could have seen this coming.

System breeds extreme apathy

The state’s system of amending its Constitution requires statewide voter approval of the amendments. It’s a highly obsolete and archaic system of government. It has caused me in the past to wonder: What is the point if so few Texans take part in this electoral process?

I have wondered before about whether we should have a Texas constitutional convention to re-craft a governing document that looks more like the federal Constitution. The nation’s founders established a governing framework avoids the cumbersome nature of calling elections whenever Congress and the president want to amend the Constitution.

Texas chose long ago to put all that power in the hands of rank-and-file Texans. Which is fine if they would actually exercise that power by going to the polls. The dismal turnout suggests to me that the vast majority of Texas residents don’t care about what their State Constitution says.

If only the state would think about the effectiveness of a system that places so much authority for governance in voters who refuse to take part in what is supposed to be a participatory process.

The Legislature won’t change it. The governor won’t go there, either.

So, we’re stuck with “dismal” turnouts that places a whole lot of power into the hands of too few of us.

national news, political news

Trump can’t help himself … or so it seems

The president of the United States is either (a) genetically incapable of saying the right things in the moment of national grief or (b) willfully ignores the impulse to offer comfort and surrenders to the urge to politicize these events.

I truly am baffled. I cannot make the call.

A lunatic drove a truck into a crowd in New York City, killing eight people; he injured many others. An NYC police officer shot and wounded him. It turns out the suspect is a Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan who reportedly shouted “Allah Akbar!” before driving the truck into the crowd.

What does Donald Trump do? He starts leveling blame on Democrats. He calls our nation’s justice system a “laughingstock” and a “joke.” He announces plans to immediately revoke the immigration policy that enabled the suspect to enter the national legally in 2010.

Oh sure. He called the suspect an “animal.” Indeed, if the young man is convicted of the crime for which he’s being accused, he will deserve the maximum punishment allowed under the law.

It’s the politicization that is most bothersome. The president simply appears ill-equipped to offer anything approaching words of comfort and support. He needs to reach out to the loved ones of those who died. He needs to speak of the heroism of the first responders, such as the officer who stopped the man accused of the shooting.

Trump needs to provide some semblance of actual leadership, rather than blasting out those damn tweets. The president’s one-time good buddy, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has it right when he blasts the president for failing to lead the nation that is troubled once again by an act of terror.

I’m not smart enough to do a lot of things. One of them is to reach any conclusion about whether the president just isn’t wired to offer high-minded words of comfort or whether he just chooses willingly to take the low road.

Whatever it is, the president of the United States keeps falling far short of performing the tasks he inherited when he took the oath of office.

national news, Uncategorized

How do we stop these ‘lone wolves’?

The immigrant from Uzbekistan who drove a rented truck into the New York City crowd this week illustrates the extreme difficulty in fighting this war on international terrorism.

How does the United States prevent a lone wolf who enters this country legally — even if he’s been through “extreme vetting” — from committing the act of terror we saw in New York?

Donald Trump says the nation is going to end the visa lottery program that enabled the suspect to enter the country in 2010. Of course, as is the president’s tendency, he has politicized the issue by blaming Democrats for their so-called lax immigration policy; he ignores the fact that the law under question was signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush.

My point on this matter is that lone wolf attacks are going to occur despite our best and most diligent efforts to root out evil doers before they commit their terrible act.

I say this also as someone who supports the president’s desire to implement an “extreme vetting” policy for those seeking to come to this country.

But let us not forget, too, that homegrown Americans are capable of committing infamous and dastardly acts. The Las Vegas massacre this summer; the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995; the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre; the Charleston, S.C., church slaughter? All of those evil men were native-born, corn-fed Americans; they only represent a fraction of the carnage committed by American-born terrorists.

The Uzbek suspect came here under an existing policy. There reportedly was no sign that he harbored pro-Islamic State sympathies. He became radicalized while living among Americans.

Then he took out his rage. This is why the war against international terrorism is so damn difficult to wage.

national news, political news

‘W’ takes off the muzzle

I don’t know Amarillo resident James Whitaker, the author of a brief letter to the editor of the Amarillo Globe-News.

The letter included this passage:

What disturbs me is that during eight years of President Barack Obama’s administration, and the reversal of many of President Bush’s actions, Bush said nothing. But now he comes out and attacks this current president?

I think I might have an answer for this gentleman.

President Bush was quiet because President Obama conducted himself with grace and dignity during his two terms in office. Yes, he was critical of Bush administration policies and, yes, he sought to reverse some of his immediate predecessor’s policies.

Obama also was quite gracious toward Bush as the men conducted a relatively seamless transition from one administration to another. He thanked Bush publicly on multiple occasions for the cooperation he delivered during that transition after the 2008 election.

President Obama also made a point of telling the world that the first phone call he made after U.S. special ops forces were out of harm’s way after the mission that killed Osama bin Laden was to President Bush.

George W. Bush’s recent criticism of Donald J. Trump was aimed at the sheer coarseness of the political debate that has been generated ever since Trump entered the political arena back in June 2015.

President Bush was the first leading politician to declare after 9/11 that “we are not at war against Islam.” Donald Trump has all but turned aside that notion with his continual attacks on Islam and those who practice it.

What’s more, Trump’s insults against the former president’s brother, one-time GOP primary campaign opponent Jeb Bush, surely has weighed on W’s mind.

I am one who found the former president’s remarks recently about the current president to be on the mark. They were cogent and they accurately portrayed the divisive nature of Donald Trump’s effort to govern the United States.

Here’s the former president’s recent remarks that provide a barely veiled reference to the current president.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz6SaVTquuY

I believe President Bush makes his case with precision.

national news

Trump-Schumer bromance hits the skids

I guess Donald John Trump and Charles Schumer aren’t such good New York City pals after all.

The president of the United States and the U.S. Senate’s Democratic leader are now exchanging barbs over Trump’s comments in the wake of the NYC tragedy that killed eight people in a terrorist attack.

I’ll take Sen. Schumer’s side in this dispute. Are you surprised? I didn’t think so.

Trump, Schumer trade barbs

Trump went after Schumer immediately after the Uzbek immigrant was taken into custody after running into a crowd. He blamed Schumer for endorsing an immigration bill that allowed the Uzbek to enter the country on a special visa.

Schumer responded that “I guess it’s not too early to politicize a tragedy,” blasting the president for taking the low road while the nation’s largest city deals with the grief brought by the madman.

Schumer played a role in the enactment of the Diversity Visa Lottery Program. He was a junior member of Congress at the time. The program, incidentally, was signed into law by then-President George H.W. Bush, a Republican … just like Donald Trump.

But still …

If only the president could simply limit his public comments in the wake of such tragedy to concern for the victims and to speak to the resolve of a nation that won’t be terrorized.

national news

Terrorism is terrorism, no matter who commits it

A terrorist drove a truck into a crowded New York City recreational area, killing eight people and injuring many others.

A terrorist also opened fire on a crowd of music revelers in Las Vegas, killing more than 50 of them, injuring hundreds more.

The media and the government, though, are calling only one of them an “act of terror.” It’s the NYC event. Why is that? I guess it’s because the perpetrator is an immigrant from Uzbekistan who happens to be a Muslim and who has professed allegiance to the Islamic State.

The Las Vegas shooter? He was just a madman who happened to possess a lot of firepower, which he used to slaughter those victims from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.

I’m a bit baffled as to why we call one incident a terrorist act but not the other.

My take on it goes like this: The spectators who fled the gunfire in Las Vegas were scared out of their wits; they were terrorized by the sound of automatic gunfire that was raining down on them. They were not expecting to be shot by a lunatic perched high above them. Did the gunman commit an act of “domestic terrorism”? Yeah, I believe he did.

The media coverage of that act, though, didn’t make that connection. Neither did the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who said immediately after the Las Vegas massacre that it was “too soon” to comment on it. The president experienced no such reticence about the Uzbek loon who drove the truck into the crowd.

Why is that? Oh, it’s because he’s a foreigner … and a Muslim to boot!

Terrorism has the same impact on its victims, no matter who commits such a heinous act or the motivation behind it.