Monthly Archives: March 2018

education news, local news, national news

The ‘next generation’ is stepping up

I am not inclined to bemoan the future of our country based on the behavior of those who comprise “the next generation.” I have sought over many years to give my younger fellow Americans the benefit of the doubt that they’ll step up when it counts the most.

We are witnessing the next generation doing precisely that as it relates to its fear and concern over gun violence.

A lot of Panhandle students are going to march this weekend from Ellwood Park to the Potter County Courthouse. They are part of a national movement called “March For Our Lives.” I read today that national organizers are expecting as many as 1 million marchers from coast to coast.

The Amarillo march is being organized out of Caprock High School, with students seeking to generate interest in communities far beyond Amarillo.

The catalyst is that slaughter in Parkland, Fla., on Valentine’s Day. A gunman killed 17 students and staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. This massacre was merely the latest in a horrifying string of such mass murders.

It has energized a generation of Americans. Some of them have become media stars. They have spoken with remarkable eloquence about their fear and their desire to see political leaders take action against gun violence.

These young people have taken the point in organizing these marches. They are giving older folks — such as yours truly — greater faith that our country is being taken over by responsible citizens. They are energized by what they deem to be a crisis. They are taking action. They are engaging in activities that signal good citizenship.

These concerns about “younger generation” go back many thousands of years. Quotations attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato lament how badly children behave, how disrespectful they are of their elders and how “they riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?”

Today’s youngsters make me proud and affirm my faith that our country will find its way well into the future.

national news

Hillary tries to walk it back … good luck with that

Try as she might, Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to do the impossible. As my late friend and colleague Claude Duncan used to say, “You can’t unhonk the horn.”

Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, went to India and told an audience that those who voted for her came from more economically progressive and advanced states; those who voted for Donald Trump were, um, less progressive and advanced.

Oh, boy. You can’t go there, Hillary Clinton.

She has been criticized roundly for her remarks. I am joining in that criticism. Yes, she received my vote in 2016 and she would get it again were she to run against the guy who beat her.

Her “explanation” rings hollow. She said she didn’t intend to offend anyone with her remarks. Clinton wrote on Facebook: “I meant no disrespect to any individual or group. And I want to look to the future as much as anybody.”

Look to the future? Sure she does. I take that statement to mean she wants to set her remarks aside and doesn’t want to keep explaining herself.

“No, it’s not helpful at all,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said on “Fox News Sunday,” when she was asked to comment on Clinton’s comments.  “In fact, my friend Hillary Clinton is wrong.”

According to The Hill: Clinton also implied that women who cast a ballot for Trump did so due to “ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.”

“As much as I hate the possibility, and hate saying it, it’s not that crazy when you think about our ongoing struggle to reach gender balance — even within the same household. I did not realize how hard it would hit many who heard it,” Clinton said in her explanation.

Now she realizes it. I’m glad she sought to clarify what she meant to convey. Still, I am having difficulty trying to separate the intent from the spoken word.

local news

Giving thanks once more for local heroes

I cannot say this enough, so forgive me if you have heard this before.

Our firefighters and other first responders continue to amaze me. I am grateful beyond measure for the work they do, the service they provide and the protection they provide to the community they swear to protect.

Some wildfires erupted west of Amarillo last night. The wind was merciless, relentless and unforgiving. The people who ran straight toward the potential danger kicked into high-gear action immediately.

Amarillo and Potter County fire crews were able to contain the blazes in fairly quick fashion.

It occurs to me that these folks are pretty damn good at this firefighting stuff. No, they’re real good at it.

We toss the “hero” term around a bit too loosely. We hang the label on athletes. We’ve actually called actors over many years “heroes” because they portray them on film or TV. I prefer the term “role model” to describe athletes’ public standing. I’ll leave that discussion at that.

As for actual heroes, they work for us, for you and me. They are public servants. Some of them don’t even get paid for their heroism. They are the volunteer firefighters who often serve in the rural communities surrounding Amarillo. They have day jobs but choose to respond when the fire alarm goes off — at which time they rush into harm’s way.

They do this to protect us. They shield us from the dangers that fire presents. These days that danger is heightened by the dual factors of high wind and lack of moisture. I cannot even remember the last time it rained in our community.

One more time — and it won’t be the final time — I want to extend a public thank you to the men and women who answer the call on our behalf. You are heroes. We all appreciate you.

national news

Trump protests too much

Does it make sense to you that someone who denies wrongdoing should keep firing broadsides at those who are investigating allegations of misbehavior? Donald Trump is at virtual war with Robert Mueller.

Trump is the president of the United States. Mueller is a special counsel assigned to look into whether the president did something wrong.

The president denies in one breath that he did anything wrong. In the next breath he rakes Mueller over the coals, calling his probe a “witch hunt” and assorted other pejoratives.

Mueller is examining the president on several fronts. He was selected by the Department of Justice to look into allegations that Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russians who interfered in our 2016 presidential election. He is trying to determine whether there is any obstruction of justice efforts aimed at blocking the investigation. Mueller also is now looking at the Trump Organization’s business dealings with Russian interests.

Trump is howling. He is bellowing. He is tweeting his rage at Mueller.

Why is the president so angry? Why is he so enraged that Mueller — a former FBI director and by most people’s estimation a stand-up, first-class, meticulous lawyer — is doing the job he was charged to do?

Mueller is keeping his mouth shut. He is not talking publicly about his investigation. He is acting professionally. He has assigned his team of legal eagles to pore over the mountains of data they have collected.

Trump is doing quite the opposite. He is yapping, yammering and yowling daily — if not damn near hourly — via Twitter about Mueller’s probe. Is that a logical response of someone who is in the clear? I don’t believe it is.

It would seem more appropriate for the president to do two things: Keep his trap shut and then give the special counsel every bit of information he seeks.

Instead, every Trump tweet or public statement about Mueller only heightens the suspicion that he well might have something to hide. He might say he is innocent of wrongdoing. The president’s actions, though, suggest something quite different.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 84

My faith in our first responders remains strong.

They answered the call last night and fought some wildfires just west of Amarillo. The fire, fueled by howling wind and tinder-dry fuel, for a time threatened portions of the vast medical center way out yonder.

I awoke this morning and learned that the fires had been contained; no loss of life or even any injury. The wind is still brisk and the TV forecasters are telling us they’ll subside sometime this afternoon or evening.

It cannot settle down quickly enough.

Thank you, firefighters. You are heroes in every sense of the word.

***

There. That all said — with great sincerity and respect — I want to share a nasty “fantasy” I’m feeling.

The other evening, with the wind screaming just outside our RV, I had this nightmare scenario. We’re about a quarter-mile south of a high-speed freight rail line. Trains roar past us day and night. The TV weathermen and women tell us about the sparks generated by trains and the potential for starting fires.

The nightmare goes like this: We’re lying in bed. Someone knocks on our fifth wheel door. We open it. The park hosts tell us we have 10 minutes to vacate our spot and get as far away from an approaching fire that has just ignited along the rail line to our north.

Don’t laugh! Please!

I am now thinking it might be appropriate for my wife and me to come up with a 10-minute evacuation drill in case someone knocks on the door in the middle of the night.

Either that or we’ll pack it all up on our own time — and head to the next place.

The latter event is far more likely to occur than the first one.

national news

How can we trust Trump’s word?

Ty Cobb, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers, has put it on the record: The president is not considering, nor has he discussed, firing special counsel Robert Mueller.

There you have it. We’re supposed to take Cobb’s word for it. We’re supposed to presume that the president’s word is as good as gold. He won’t act. He won’t do something incredibly stupid, which would be to fire Mueller before he has completed his probe into Russian meddling, alleged collusion with the Trump campaign and potential obstruction of justice by the president or his team members.

Pardon my skepticism. I don’t trust anything, not a single word, that comes from (a) the president, (b) any member of his inner circle or (c) anyone with any connection with this individual.

What the president says today is subject to immediate change tomorrow — if not later in the same day.

Reuters reports: “In response to media speculation and related questions being posed to the administration, the White House yet again confirms that the President is not considering or discussing the firing of the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller,” said Cobb.

Sure thing.

environmental news, local news

This is what the Dust Bowl looked like?

Dust Bowl, anyone?

What you see here is a picture I snapped this evening looking west from where we are living. The wind is howling. The weather apps on my cell phone and my wife’s cell phone tell us it’ll keep howling through the night and into the next day.

This picture frightens me a bit.

I am not going to equate what we’re seeing here in 2018 to what Texas Panhandle witnessed in the 1930s, when hideously ignorant farming practices coupled with a severe drought created the nation’s worst-ever man-made environmental disaster.

Ken Burns’s documentary, “The Dust Bowl,” told that story in a gripping series that aired on Panhandle PBS a couple years ago. Elderly residents who lived through the Dust Bowl as children recalled watching their siblings and young friends die of “dust pneumonia.” They talked about how they either fled the High Plains or remained to rebuild their lives destroyed by Mother Nature’s merciless wrath.

Are we heading for another catastrophe? No. I don’t intend to suggest such a thing.

The picture I have posted with this blog item, though, intends to illustrate that we are getting a touch — perhaps only a smidgen — of what this region’s ancestors endured during a much darker time.

We all are ready for some rain.

local news

Hoping this march leaves big footprint

One might be able to expect a big turnout for what’s coming at the end of the week in places such as Berkeley, Boston and Austin.

My strong and sincere hope is that the event that will unfold at Ellwood Park in Amarillo, Texas, will rival what can be expected in those more progressive-minded communities.

Students from throughout the Texas Panhandle are going to “March For Our Lives.” They’ll parade through downtown Amarillo and conclude at the Potter County Courthouse. There, they will read the names of the 17 students and staff members who were gunned down on Valentine’s Day in Parkland, Fla. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has become the latest “name” of tragedy related to gun violence.

Columbine, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Orlando. And now it’s Parkland. They’re all scarred indelibly — along with too many other sites — by the horror of gun violence.

The students want their collective voice to be heard. They want politicians to listen to them, just as politicians from an earlier era listened to young people who marched against the Vietnam War.

Those earlier young people who now are grandparents of today’s youngsters had “skin in that game.” Many of them did not want to serve in a war with which they disagreed. They marched, chanted and occasionally battled with law enforcement.

Today’s young people believe — correctly, in my view — that they are in the line of fire of another battle. It’s being fought here at home. The gun lobby has lined up one side; these students and many millions of members of the American public are lined up on the other side.

The students want change in the laws that govern the sale and purchase of firearms. They want stricter controls on those who can obtain those weapons. The gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, traditionally has opposed those tighter rules and regs, contending that they threaten the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Will the students here in the Texas Panhandle, a place known as being extremely friendly to the gun lobby, be able to have their voices heard as clearly as they’ll be heard next Saturday in other communities? Time will tell us plenty.

Our nation’s young people are frightened. To their credit, though, they aren’t cowering. They are taking their message into city streets and rural roads from coast to coast.

They want to be heard.

Let them be heard while they “March For Our Lives.”

national news, political news

Won’t respond? Actually, he just did

The lawyer representing former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe said it point blank: He won’t respond to every “childish, defamatory, disgusting & false tweet by the President.”

That was part of Michael Bromwich’s tweet that he blasted out today.

Donald Trump has been engaged in another Twitter rant about McCabe, calling his firing this past week by Attorney General Jeff Sessions a “great day for democracy.”

McCabe was just 24 hours from retiring from the FBI. Sessions decided to give him the boot because of allegations that he didn’t tell the truth about matters involving special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into “the Russia thing.”

Sessions acted without a scintilla of class in firing McCabe in that manner. Meanwhile, Trump has been gone into his usual Twitter spasm about McCabe, Mueller, Democrats, Hillary Clinton … you name it.

Bromwich won’t respond to all those “childish, defamatory and disgusting” tweets?

My take goes along this line: Donald Trump deals exclusively in childishness, defamation, falsehoods, as well as disgusting commentary. His tweets fall into that category virtually all the time.

Which means that Andrew McCabe’s lawyer has just responded to all that have been issued to date and all that will come in the future.

national news

Mueller’s allies outnumber Trump’s

Donald Trump is finding out a fundamental truth about Washington, D.C. It is that he doesn’t have as many friends in high places as he thinks — or says — he does.

The president went on another Twitter tirade this morning, flinging thinly veiled threats against special counsel Robert Mueller. His lawyer, John Dowd, said he is “praying” that Mueller shuts down his Russia investigation in the wake Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s firing of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

Mueller is a lot of trails to explore before he can wrap his investigation up. Law enforcement officials say it. Now, too, do Republicans in Congress who are rallying behind Mueller.

They are dismayed at Trump’s tweets and the threats he is delivering against Mueller, whose task is to determine whether the president is trying to obstruct justice, whether his campaign “colluded” with Russian election-meddling efforts and whether his business dealings are somehow interfering with the president’s duties as head of state.

GOP lawmakers fanned out on Sunday morning talk shows this morning to offer words of warning if Trump tries to dismiss Mueller. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said firing Mueller would signal the “beginning of the end” of Trump’s presidency. Rep. Trey Gowdy, another South Carolina Republican, wants Mueller’s probe to run its course. “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you should want the investigation to be as fulsome and thorough as possible,” Gowdy said.

I get that Trump has his friends and political allies, too. I just get the sense that they are outnumbered by those who are standing behind the special counsel who, you should recall, was hailed universally by politicians of all stripes when the Justice Department appointed him to do the job.

I feel the need to remind readers of this blog that Donald Trump had zero political connections when he ran for president. He spent his entire professional life making zillions of dollars in private business, stepping on toes and trampling foes in the process.

That experience does not lend itself to cultivating political alliances in an altogether different world.