Monthly Archives: November 2017

local news

A community’s suffering continues

Life in a small town has its charms, as I’ve been told by those who grew up in rural America.

The closest I have come to small-town life occurred for brief period in the early 1980s when our family moved from Portland to Gladstone, Ore. But Gladstone is a suburb of Portland, and is surrounded by the hustle and bustle of urban life.

I mention this today because of the on-going grief that has gripped a rural community in the Texas Panhandle.

Canadian is home to around 2,900 residents. One of those residents, though, has been missing for a year. His name is Thomas Brown. He is a Canadian High School student. He disappeared one year ago, on Thanksgiving, 2016.

He hasn’t been seen or heard from since.

I have been reluctant to comment on this story. I have not been following it closely, given that my attention has been diverted in many other directions.

I will not venture an opinion on what I believe has happened to Thomas. But as I have tried to catch up a bit with this story, I am saddened beyond measure by the grief of those who love Thomas and who pin their waking hours to hoping he returns to them safely.

What strikes me, too, is how events such as this affect small, rural communities. The nation’s heart shattered when the gunman opened fire at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, a community of roughly 400 residents. Everyone in that town knew at least one of the 26 victims who were slaughtered by the madman. The community may never recover from its shared grief.

My sense as well is that Canadian also may not recover from its sadness until it determines Thomas’s fate. Everyone’s hope, quite obviously, is that Thomas returns home and is able to explain his whereabouts.

Until then, a Texas Panhandle community continues to struggle with its emotions. Prayers are most definitely in order.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 56

My full-time retirement is not yet a year old, but we’re building a bank of memories already about this new life we’ve begun.

Today, though, brings to mind a memory I left behind when my 37-year career in print journalism came to an end.

It occurred on Thanksgiving Day, 1989. I was far from home. I was traveling through Southeast Asia with about 20 other editorial page writers and editors. I have written about it before. Here is the blog item I posted in 2014 about that remarkable day:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/11/a-thanksgiving-to-remember-in-vietnam/

The post details the traveling we endured on that day. It was a bit harrowing. It produced none-too-pleasant “fantasies” about what might happen to us as we proceeded from Cambodia to Vietnam on that uniquely American holiday.

That particular journey was one of the more remarkable events in a career I left behind more than five years ago.

I built many wonderful relationships during more than three decades as a journalist. Indeed, the journey we took in 1989 through Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam resulted in a friendship I forged with one fellow that I cherish to this day. Indeed, our wives have become dear friends, too. We watched each other’s children grow into adulthood.

As much as I miss those days and the fascinating sights I was able to see while pursuing the craft I enjoyed for so many years, I continue to look forward to more adventures in an entirely different context.

I give thanks for what I’ve been allowed to do for my professional life. I also give thanks for the relatively good health I enjoy that I trust will enable me to pursue what lies ahead.

Life is good, ladies and gents.

national news, political news

Hey, Kellyanne, stop the campaigning!

Kellyanne Conway is acting just like her boss, the president of the United States. She cannot stop campaigning on behalf of politicians.

However, unlike Donald John Trump — whose position allows him to do such things — Conway has this restriction she seems to ignore. She is an executive branch employee. She draws a publicly funded salary to offer advice and counsel to the president. Therefore, she is not allowed to engage in partisan political activity.

Doing so puts her in violation of the Hatch Act.

Conway now is facing an ethics complaint because she spoke out on “Fox & Friends” on behalf of Alabama Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore. No can do, the complaint says. The Hatch Act applies to senior White House advisers as much as it does to mid-level bureaucrats.

What did Conway say? “Doug Jones in Alabama, folks, don’t be fooled. He will be a vote against tax cuts. He is weak on crime, weak on borders. He is strong on raising your taxes. He is terrible for property owners.” 

Jones is the Democrat who’s running against Moore for the Senate seat. That sounds for all the world like an endorsement of Moore. Does it to you?

Sure it does! Except the White House is pushing back, saying that Conway didn’t “advocate” for a candidate. Huh? Of course she did!

Conway would do well to stick only to policy matters when speaking in public. Leave the politicking to the politicians.

national news

Bill Clinton paid the price for his misbehavior

We’re talking these days about sexual predation, abuse, assault, harassment. Men do behave badly at times. A number of men in powerful positions have been accused of that bad behavior.

I feel the need to set the record straight on one powerful man who once was in the news because of his misdeeds.

Republicans keep harping on former President Bill Clinton’s misbehavior while he was in the White House. They use that historical context to “defend” the actions of one currently prominent GOP politician, U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama, who’s been accused of sexual abuse involving underage girls.

These Republicans, some of whom are friends of mine — and even a family member — wonder why President Clinton got a pass when he was messing around with Monica Lewinsky, a young White House intern in the late 1990s.

I must remind them: President Clinton got impeached. The House of Representatives — led by its GOP majority — impeached the president because he lied under oath to a federal grand jury that was snooping around, looking for something to stick to the president. The special counsel, Kenneth Starr, uncovered the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship, summoned the president to testify to the grand jury, asked him whether he had an sexual relationship with Lewinsky.

Clinton said “no.” That was untrue. Thus, the House had its grounds for impeachment: perjury. The president was humiliated. His wife became, shall we say, quite angry with him.

Did the president get off scot-free? Hardly. He paid a huge political price in the moment.

The U.S. Senate put him on trial. Senators acquitted him. Thus, the president was allowed to serve out the remainder of his second term in office.

Yes, there were other allegations. Clinton did settle with one of the accusers. He was stripped of his law license in Arkansas.

There’s no doubt that the former president has reclaimed his political standing. Time does have a way of putting some matters into different contexts.

However, the notion that Bill Clinton did not pay a price for his misbehavior is a canard those who still despise him are using to divert attention from the issue of the moment, which involves the conduct of the current crop of high-powered men.

media news

GOP lawmaker is sorry … for this?

Anthony “Carlos Danger” Weiner apparently had a soul mate in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Weiner, a Democrat, is now serving prison time for “sexting” underage girls. But lo and behold! Check out this item regarding Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Barton from right here in Texas.

According to The Hill:

Barton’s acknowledgement that he appears in the photo emphasizes that the women he was involved with in the past, one of whom may have shared the photo, were above the age of consent and willing participants.

“Each was consensual. Those relationships have ended. I am sorry I did not use better judgment during those days. I am sorry that I let my constituents down,” he continued.

The photo in question is of Barton’s, um, penis. It has been distributed on the Internet.

Oh, Joe, Joe, Joe …

You know about Weiner. He used the nickname “Carlos Danger” while sharing pictures of himself via Twitter during an earlier scandal.

The most hilarious part of Barton’s mea culpa, though, is this: He references having affairs with “other mature adult women.”

Do you get why I think it’s funny? He said in a statement that he fooled around with “adult” women and not — as it has been alleged about GOP U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama — with underage girls, children.

Man, oh man. This social media stuff seems to get ’em all.

national news, Sports news

Donald vs. LaVar: Battle for the Ages?

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It’s come down to this: The president of the United States, the commander in chief of the world’s mightiest military machine, is waging a war of words/wits with a loudmouth father of sons who aspire to athletic greatness.

That’s right. Donald John Trump and LaVar Ball are going back and forth via Twitter.

This is how the Leader of the Free World chooses to spend some of his time. He calls Ball “an ungrateful fool” because Ball said the president didn’t do what he said he did to obtain the freedom of one of Ball’s sons, who got caught shoplifting in China.

The president has made a stupid feud even more stupid by his engaging this blowhard bozo in a Twitter feud.

I know the president is hopelessly addicted to Twitter. I won’t call on him to quit engaging in this kind of petulance. He’s acting like an overgrown, overhyped pubescent punk. He can’t help himself.

The man is diminishing the high office to which he was elected.

Don King without the hair?

But … he “tells it like it is.”

legal news, national news

This ex-prosecutor is ‘soft on crime’?

It’s Doug Jones vs. Roy Moore in the race to become Alabama’s next U.S. senator.

Many of us know about Moore: former two-time Alabama Supreme Court chief justice who was kicked out of office over ethical violations; the Republican now stands accused of sexually assaulting minors. These accusations have consumed the media in recent weeks and have created — at minimum — a competitive U.S. Senate campaign in reliably Republican red Alabama.

Jones is a bit of a mystery. He’s a former federal prosecutor. He’s a Democrat.

He’s also been called “soft on crime” by Donald J. Trump, who today all but endorsed Moore — his fellow Republican — for the Senate seat once filled by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

But here’s the deal: Jones once prosecuted the monsters who blew up the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, the dastardly act of domestic terrorism that killed four African-American girls in Birmingham, Ala. He sent the two men — members of the Ku Klux Klan — to prison.

Is the president of the United States operating in the same universe as the rest of us?

Oh, wait! I think I know the answer!

national news, political news

Are we more divided than ever?

I am old enough to have lived through some deep national divisions.

* We have the Vietnam War that tore us into two camps: Hawks vs. Doves. The Hawks wanted to fight the war to a battlefield victory; the Doves wanted out of that conflict. Riots erupted in our streets. Blood flowed.

* Then came Watergate. A team of goofballs sought to break into the Democratic National Committee offices. They were arrested and charged with burglary. Then it went downhill from there. President Nixon’s re-election committee became involved. The president sought to cover it up. Republicans stood behind the president; Democrats wanted his political head to roll. The president resigned.

* After that, President Clinton faced impeachment. Why? Ostensibly it was because he lied to a grand jury about his relationship with That Woman. Republicans were looking for a reason to impeach him. The president gave it to them. Republicans detested Clinton from the beginning of his presidency. Democrats stood firmly with him. The Senate acquitted Clinton.

* And then we had the 2000 election. President Bush was elected despite getting fewer popular votes than Vice President Al Gore. It came down to Florida’s results. They started recounting the ballots. The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 to stop the recount. Bush was elected with 537 votes to spare in Florida. He won the state’s electoral votes. Republicans hailed the victory; many Democrats never quite got over it.

All of those prior divisions seem to pale in comparison to what we’re witnessing now. Donald J. Trump won on a platform that preached nativism, nationalism, populism. It’s us against them. He vowed to “put America first” and to “make America great again.”

He also vowed to “unify” the nation.

The president has done nothing of the sort. Indeed, it strikes me that he’s deliberately sought to do precisely the opposite. He keeps re-litigating the election, which he won! He keeps picking needless fights with pro football players who protest police practices, with media representatives, with Gold Star families.

This is how you unify the country?

Just today, the president lined up with a GOP Senate candidate who’s been accused of sexual assault on children. Why is that? Because he’s not a Democrat! The president’s base adores this kind of rhetoric. It doesn’t matter how divisive it is and how it contradicts what the president himself vowed to do after winning a bitter, contentious, hateful campaign.

I can speak only for the eras I have witnessed. This era’s division seems deeper than anything I have watched in the past 50 years.

The worst element of this division is that its catalyst occupies the White House.

local news

Amarillo (still) Matters

I had been wondering whatever became of Amarillo Matters, a political action group formed early this year to campaign for a slate of City Council candidates.

A High Plains Blogger post posed the question: Where have they gone?

https://highplainsblogger.com/2017/11/just-wondering-amarillo-matters-where-is-it/

I have some news. Amarillo Matters has re-emerged. It’s not exactly a scoop, but I’ll take a touch of credit for prompting Amarillo Matters to show itself again on the public landscape.

It’s now a 501(c)4 non-profit group, according to a press release issued by Amarillo Matters. It has some ideas on how to make life better in Amarillo. I certainly welcome Amarillo Matters back into view.

Amarillo Matters has elected a board of directors and it has chosen a president, Jason Herrick. The group’s press release talks about Amarillo Matters’ interest in promoting projects designed to improve the city’s economic well-being.

One particular project is one that caught my eye when I first heard about it: Texas Tech University’s proposal to build a large-animal veterinary medical school in Amarillo.

According to Amarillo Matters’ release: “We started working on this during the last legislative session. Our goal was to get funding in the state budget for a vet school in Amarillo,” Board Treasurer Andrew Hall said. More than $4 million was eventually allocated to Texas Tech to begin initial plans for a school. “This is the perfect example of the types of projects we are going to focus on. It’s something that will not only benefit Amarillo but the entire Panhandle and beyond,” Hall added. 

It’s fair ask: What can be wrong with that?

I have lamented about flashes in the pan that come and go on occasion in Amarillo. We hear from political candidates who emerge at election time; they lose and then they disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.

The same can be said of the organization formerly known as the Amarillo Millennial Movement. It formed to pitch its support for the multipurpose event venue. The MPEV was put to a citywide referendum vote in November 2015; it passed and then the AMM went poof! when the young woman who founded the organization moved to Fort Worth.

I’m glad that Amarillo Matters has resurfaced in some other form.

The city already is undergoing a significant makeover in its downtown district. Mayor Ginger Nelson has declared her intention to clean up residential alleys that have become cluttered with trash. Interstates 40 and 27 both are under major construction, as is Loop 335 along its Hollywood Road right-of-way.

Amarillo Matters will retain its PAC status as well, as the release notes: The group … will be involved in local elections. “We’re going to limit the races to those that have a direct impact on our city, economy and future,” Herrick said. The PAC has been watching the upcoming primary election and is expected to issue endorsements soon. 

I suspect those “endorsements” will generate their share of public discourse, debate and perhaps even a little dissension.

There’s nothing wrong with that, either.

national news

Trump endorses an accused pedophile

Roy Moore is in league with Vladimir Putin.

That means they’re in league with Donald John Trump.

Follow this logic for just a moment:

* Several women have accused Moore, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Alabama of making improper sexual advances on them; the accusations have resonated with many political leaders, who say they believe the women and have abandoned Moore. Meanwhile, Moore denies doing what they allege he did.

* Intelligence experts in this country have concluded that Putin ordered the Russian government to hack into our electoral process during the 2016 presidential election, aiming to swing the election in Trump’s favor. Putin has denied doing it.

So, Moore’s denial and Putin’s denial have cinched it for the president.

Trump has said he believes Putin’s denial that Russia didn’t interfere with our election. Now he implies belief in Moore’s denial that he preyed on women when they were underage girls.

“He denies it. He totally denies it,” Trump said, noting the alleged incidents took place around 40 years ago. “Roy Moore denies it — that’s all I can say.”

‘We don’t need a Democrat’

The president said that Democratic candidate for the Senate seat, Doug Jones, is wrong on national security, on taxes, on immigration and on crime. Moore’s the man, according to Trump.

But … what if the allegations are proven to be true? Senate Republicans don’t need an y more persuading. They are running away from Moore as quickly as they can. Some GOP senators say they are throwing their support behind Jones, who hasn’t been accused of the kind of disgraceful behavior that Moore allegedly has done.

None other than the attorney general of the United States, Jeff Sessions, whose seat Moore and Jones are seeking to fill, has said he also believes the women!

This is sickening in the extreme.