Monthly Archives: April 2018

International news

Foreign policy no longer a bipartisan effort

It once was thought that “politics stopped at the water’s edge,” meaning that Democrats and Republicans locked arms when facing the rest of the world, setting aside their partisan differences.

A couple of events this week have demonstrated that the late Republican U.S. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg’s words of wisdom no longer apply.

Event No. 1: Mike Pompeo received a partisan vote of confirmation by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee to become the next secretary of state. The full Senate now figures to confirm Pompeo, with only a couple of Democrats crossing over to cast affirmative votes.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who had been thought to be a “no” vote on Pompeo, changed his mind after receiving assurances from Donald Trump about Pompeo’s view regarding the Iraq War, which Paul opposed.

Event No. 2: The president is going to play host this week to a state dinner honoring French President Emmanuel Macron. But here’s the catch: Trump didn’t invite a single Democrat to the White House gala, which is starkly against presidential tradition.

Presidents of both parties traditionally reach across the aisle for these state dinners, which feature sumptuous menus, lots of fine music, toasts and expressions of good wishes.

Not this time, which happens to be the president’s first such state dinner since taking office. What’s more, Macron is head of state of our nation’s oldest international ally. After all, France fought side by side with us while our forebears revolted against Britain’s King George III.

As for the upcoming secretary of state vote, I feel compelled to remind everyone that the office of nation’s top diplomat needs to come in with a semblance of a mandate from the legislative branch of government. It sends the world a message that we remain united in the cause of furthering our nation’s interests.

Former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry, for instance, all received unanimous or near-unanimous votes of confirmation by the Senate.

Politics must end at the our water’s edge. It’s not just a quaint notion. It’s real and it’s vital in the conduct of foreign policy.

national news

Heroes don’t think of themselves that way

James Shaw Jr. is your typical hero.

That is, he doesn’t consider himself to be a hero, even though what he did was heroic in the extreme.

What was that? All he did was wrestle the gun out of the hand of a madman who had opened fire over the weekend at a Nashville, Tenn., Waffle House. The gunman killed four people before he fled from the restaurant.

Police caught the man suspected of committing the murders. He reportedly was hiding in the woods behind an apartment complex.

As for Shaw, well, he is a hero. He can tell us all he wants that “anyone would do” what he did. However, “anyone” wasn’t there at the time; Shaw was there and he likely saved the lives of many other restaurant patrons through his heroic action.

The gunman had opened fire, then stopped momentarily to reload his weapon. That’s when Shaw jumped him, realizing he had more than a moment of time to seek to disarm the shooter.

I think of the term “presence of mind” as I ponder what James Shaw did at the Waffle House. The young man has it in abundance.

James Shaw Jr. has earned his place among regular American heroes.

business news, national news, political news

Presidency fattens POTUS’s wallet

I am acutely aware that I am not the first person to wonder aloud about this, but the president of the United States shouldn’t be fattening his personal finances because he happens to be the head of state.

The Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits presidents from using their high office to take money from foreign governments. It remains to be seen whether Donald J. Trump has violated that provision.

This business of continuing to enrich himself here at home is equally galling … to me, at least.

Politico reports: Political groups supporting President Donald Trump are doubling as big-spending customers for the business empire he has not divested from.

Trump’s reelection campaign has spent $670,000 at Trump properties since he was elected president, and $125,000 during the first three months of this year alone, recent disclosures show.

Trump didn’t do what previous presidents customarily do when they assume their office. He retained ownership of his business empire, but placed his holdings in a trust run by sons Don Jr. and Eric. The last businessman-turned-president, Jimmy Carter, turned his peanut business over to a “blind trust” when he was elected in 1976.

Trump does it differently. He is profiting nicely at his myriad hotels, resorts and assorted business sites because of the job he holds.

I have said for a long time, before Trump even was elected president, that he built his career with one goal in mind: to enrich himself. He has done that quite well.

What is most galling is that Donald Trump is continuing to fatten his wallet even while ostensibly “serving the public” as president of the United States.

It’s all about Trump. Sickening.

national news

Conway bristles at legitimate question

CNN correspondent Dana Bash doesn’t need little ol’ me to defend her … but I’ll defend her anyway.

Bash interviewed White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway over the weekend and asked her what I believe is a totally legitimate question. Conway bristled bigly at the inquiry, suggesting that Bash wouldn’t have asked the question of a man. Bash said she would “a thousand percent.”

Bash wanted to know how Conway handles the tweets that have come from her husband, noted lawyer George Conway, that have been quite critical of Donald J. Trump’s policy pronouncements.

George Conway has since taken the message down from his Twitter account, but … as they say: You can’t unhonk the horn.

Kellyanne Conway took serious umbrage at Bash’s line of questioning.

What I heard, though, was Bash inquiring about whether a senior policy adviser to the president of the United States had any issues with her husband — who happens to be a highly regarded and respected lawyer in D.C. — questioning the policies delivered by the Leader of the Free World.

I didn’t detect any snarkiness in Bash’s question. I didn’t hear any disrespect in her voice. I heard a serious-minded question that deserved a serious-minded response.

Instead, we all heard Kellyanne Conway impugn the integrity of a serious broadcast journalist working for a serious media organization. As The Hill reported: “It’s fascinating to me that CNN would go there, but it’s very good for the whole world to have just witnessed … that it’s now fair game how people’s spouses and significant others may differ with them,” Conway told CNN’s Dana Bash.

To borrow a word from Conway’s boss: Sad.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 95

The three of us — my wife, Toby the Puppy and yours truly — are enjoying one of the peculiarly fascinating aspects of retirement as my wife and I have defined it.

We have moved to the the third RV park in Amarillo since we vacated our former home in October 2017.

Our two-week sojourn downstate was yet another glorious trek through Texas, where we saw family and friends — and, oh yes, resolved a mechanical difficulty at the front end of that trip.

Then we returned to Amarillo. We moved from one end of the sprawling to the extreme other end. From east to west.

We intend to stay at our current location for a month, maybe two. After that? Well, I’m not entirely sure.

We also located a place in North Texas where we would like to resettle. I’ll have more on that at the appropriate time.

For now, I am delighted to share with you that this mobility mode — hauling our current home to a new site — is all that it’s cracked up to be. One of the joys of this retirement journey so far has been to tell those who ask that our “home” is attached to the hitch in the bed of our pickup.

That keeps us mobile, nimble, ready for whatever else awaits.

national news

Who would have thought this could happen?

So help me I hadn’t planned on saying anything about the image posted on this blog item … but I just cannot help myself.

Former President Barack Obama and first lady Melania Trump sat next to each other at former first lady Barbara Bush’s funeral this weekend.

I am struck — along with millions of other Americans — by the smile on Mrs. Trump’s face as the former president is telling her … something.

Why mention anything about this? Well, Mrs. Trump’s husband, Donald, has been highly critical of his immediate presidential predecessor. He at times has been intensely personal in his criticism. And let us not forget, too, that Trump also has fomented the “birther” lie about former President Obama’s constitutional eligibility into whether he was qualified to hold the office to which he was elected twice. I am compelled to note that Mrs. Trump has contributed to the birther defamation by demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate.

A part of me, therefore, is glad this picture has gone viral on social media. It surely has shown up on the president’s Twitter feed. What’s more, I also am inclined to believe the president might be more than just a tad bit ticked off at his wife for speaking to — let alone smiling broadly — at Barack H. Obama.

If only any of us could be a fly on the wall in the room where the first couple talks about their respective weekend activities.

national news

Cruz was right about Trump the first time

A longtime friend of mine has dug up an interesting body of remarks from one Republican U.S. senator about a man, a fellow Republican, who was running for the presidency.

The senator is Ted Cruz of Texas; the presidential candidate is Donald J. Trump.

My friend, Beaumont Enterprise editorial page editor Tom Taschinger, took note of how Cruz’s tone toward Trump has changed since he ran against the president for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

Here is what Cruz said two years about the guy who defeated a large GOP field to win the nomination and ultimately the presidency; I encourage you to read it carefully:

“This man is a pathological liar. … He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everyone else of lying. … The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist. A narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen. Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and goes, ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’ … If you hooked him up to a lie detector test, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon and one thing in the evening, all contradictory, and he’d pass the lie detector test each time. Whatever lie he’s telling, at that minute he believes it. … He is proud of being a serial philanderer. … He describes his own battles with venereal diseases as his own personal Vietnam.”

Wow, eh? Sure thing.

Has the president changed fundamentally since then? Heavens no! A 70-something-year-old man doesn’t turn miraculously from what the Cruz Missile described above into a paragon of virtue.

I get that Cruz was running for the same office that Trump eventually won when he offered the blistering critique. Still, Sen. Cruz was right the first time. To think this guy — Trump — got elected president of the United States of America.

Ugghh!

national news

GOP pols hedge their support for Trump … so far

It’s rare for politicians of the same party as the president to withhold their support for a president who declares his intention to seek re-election.

That is what is happening within the Republican Party.

Mitt Romney, who wants to represent Utah in the U.S. Senate, says he cannot commit to supporting Donald Trump, who Romney once described as a “phony” and a “fraud.” Same for Sen. John Cornyn of Texas; ditto for Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; also ditto for lame-duck House Speaker Paul Ryan, also of Wisconsin.

Hey, what’s going on here?

Is the president,  um, toxic to Republicans? Are his GOP brethren afraid to get too close to the guy who is the titular head of their political party?

Hmm. Maybe they’re looking at recent history.

Trump backed a sitting U.S. senator from Alabama, Luther Strange, only to watch him lose that state’s GOP primary to Roy Moore, the guy accused by several women of sexual assault; Trump then threw his backing behind Moore, who ended up losing to Democratic U.S. Sen. Doug Jones in the special election.

Trump then backed a Republican candidate for the U.S. House in Pennsylvania. Oops! Then the GOP candidate lost to the Democrat.

I’m thinking the Republicans might be taking stock of the president’s actual political clout, looking past the braggadocio that flies out of the president’s mouth.

Trump boasts about all the “winning” he has brought to government and to public policy. The way I look at it, he isn’t winning nearly as much as he would like us all to believe.

The act of “winning” in Trump’s world bears no resemblance to the reality the president is facing as he confronts what is looking more and more like a difficult ride through the 2018 midterm election.

That, of course, presumes the president is able to discern the politically obvious. Of that I am not at all certain.

national news

Why all the fuss over Comey memos?

I just read the memos that James Comey wrote after meeting with Donald Trump shortly after the president took office.

I’ll attach the link from which I read them to this post, so you can see the memos for yourself.

Here it is.

Maybe someone else can find it, but for the life of me I cannot detect a single overtly hostile passage in any of it. Comey, of course, is the former FBI director whom the president fired over “the Russia thing.” As one might expect, Trump has since backed off that stated reason for firing Comey, although he hasn’t yet denied he told Russian visitors to the Oval Office that he called Comey a “nut job.”

But throughout the memos, there are references to the compliments that the president laid on Comey, how he thought the FBI director was doing a good job, how the president had heard good things about Comey, how he wished him well.

Yes, there is the reference to the president saying how he demanded “loyalty” among those who work for him. Comey chronicles in that memo that he didn’t respond to the president’s assertion; but again, he doesn’t offer any commentary about the nature of the statement. He merely said he didn’t respond.

Trump, quite expectedly, has denounced the memos. He calls them lies. He accuses Comey of being a serial liar — or words to that effect.

But as I perused the Comey memos I am struck by their tone.

Comey comes off according to my reading of his comments — which I understand were written “contemporaneously” — as a squeaky clean professional.

Maybe that’s why — now that I think about it — the president is so damn angry at the man he fired. James Comey is the kind of man that Donald Trump is not.

environmental news

Celebrate Earth Day every day

Why do we choose just a single day to honor Planet Earth, to call attention to the need to provide tender loving care to the only planet upon which human beings can survive — and thrive?

But … that’s what we do. Today is Earth Day, dear reader.

It was founded on this day 48 years ago to protest the damage that massive industrialization had done to our cherished planet. So, the recognition continues.

But this Earth Day is a bit worrisome to many of us.

Why? Well, we have a government agency — the Environmental Protection Agency — that is run by someone who doesn’t seem to place as much value on the protection part of his agency’s mission as many millions of us would prefer.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt seems hell bent on wiping environmental protection regulations off the books. He has the support of the president who nominated him to this job. Frankly, Pruitt’s management so far of the EPA has been nothing short of shameful.

But I prefer instead to look beyond the bumbling bureaucrat who runs the EPA.

Each of us has a role to play in caring for the Good Earth. Therefore, I won’t waste time criticizing the government — beyond what I’ve just stated in this blog post.

Our planet’s climate is changing. Coastal lowland is at risk of being inundated. We keep cutting down millions of acres of trees to make room for more cement and steel, which depletes the atmosphere of oxygen that living creatures consume to survive. We’re burning more fossil fuels, putting even more pressure on our fragile atmosphere.

Yes, there are alternatives to pursue. How do we look for them as individuals or families? We can drive fuel-efficient motor vehicles. We can perhaps invest more in alternative forms of energy. It’s windy out there and last I heard, the wind is as clean and infinite an energy supply as I can imagine.

Then there’s water. If you thought oil and natural gas were the lifeblood of a community, try building a town or a city without water. Those who live on the High Plains of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico know the value of water. That aquifer that flows under us is receding. What are we going to do about it?

Protecting Mother Earth isn’t just a one-day-per-year event. It ought to be at the top of our minds every day.

Check this out from the Amarillo Globe-News: “Where I work we have a program called Stewardship 365, and it’s an oil and gas company” said Amarillo Environmental Task Force member Cole Camp as he conducted a recent tour of one of the City’s recycling venues at 27th and Hayes. “So we’re working to make sure people take that mindset of being cognizant of the environment home with them. It’s not just at work. It doesn’t have to be difficult. I find it really easy to do these things. It’s just as easy for me to put my cans in my recycling bin in my garage, as it is to throw it away in the trash can. It’s just a couple of more feet. So, with a little effort, we can make a lot of progress. By using the recycling facilities here in the City and keeping the waste from going to landfill, the landfill doesn’t expand nearly as fast and the City doesn’t have to pay for methane systems. By recycling we’re reducing waste and saving money.”

Excellent advice. Happy Earth Day … today and always!