Monthly Archives: May 2018

State news

Here is why early voting sucks

A major Texas newspaper has just validated my reasons for hating early voting.

The Dallas Morning News has rescinded an editorial endorsement it had made because a candidate for a Dallas County Commissioners Court seat was revealed to have set up a trust fund for his children if they married white people.

The candidate is Republican Vickers Cunningham. The revelation came to light on the eve of the runoff election for the commissioners court seat. The Dallas Morning News was so incensed at the racially loaded matter that it pulled its endorsement.

This is what I’m talking about! I have said for many years that — banning my actual absence from my voting precinct on Election Day — I always choose to vote on that day. Why? Because I hate being surprised by learning something terrible about my candidate after voting for him or her.

The matter involving Vickers Cunningham falls into that category of unwelcome surprise.

The Morning News said it backed Cunningham because of his experience as a district court judge. It didn’t know about the compact he made with his children until “the final days of this campaign.”

I know that Election Day voting doesn’t prevent such surprises. I merely want to minimize to the best of my ability the impact of such a surprise by waiting until the last day of an election campaign to exercise my right as a citizen.

national news

This man represents the best in U.S.?

Vanity Fair has published an article in which Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist, has confirmed what many of us have believed all along about Donald John Trump Sr.

He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Read the article here.

Gates has revealed that he had to explain to the president of the United States that HIV and HPV are different diseases, that produce different outcomes. Trump couldn’t grasp the difference between the virus that makes one susceptible to AIDS  and human papillomavirus, which is an STD that can lead to cervical cancer.

As Vanity Fair reports: “Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between H.I.V. and H.P.V., so I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other,” Gates told the crowd.

Trump keeps boasting about how he went to the “best college,” and how he performed so well academically. Maybe he did back in the day. However, his business career after completing college took him down a path that didn’t prepare him in any way imaginable for the job he inherited when he was elected president of the United States.

His lack of preparation presents itself continually in the clumsiness of his public remarks, such as the time he told a roomful of Israelis — in Jerusalem after arriving from Saudi Arabia, “We just got back from the Middle East.”

Huh?

environmental news

He’s got rocks in his noggin

Mo Brooks has emerged as one of Congress’s premier climate change deniers.

What did the Alabama Republican House member say to an environmentalist today during a congressional hearing on climate change?

Check it out, as reported by USA Today: “Every single year that we’re on Earth, you have huge tons of silt deposited by the Mississippi River, by the Amazon River, by the Nile, by every major river system — and for that matter, creek, all the way down to the smallest systems,” Brooks said. “And every time you have that soil or rock whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise. Because now you’ve got less space in those oceans because the bottom is moving up.”

There’s a bit more: Brooks pointed to the White Cliffs of Dover and to California “where you have the waves crashing against the shorelines” and “you have the cliffs crash into the sea.”

“All of that displaces the water which forces it to rise, does it not?” Brooks asked.

That’s it. Rocks are filling the ocean bottom, forcing the water to rise — worldwide! That’s the Mo Brooks doctrine.

Carbon pollution? Deforestation? Other causes that might come from human activity? That’s a non-starter among climate change deniers, such as Rep. Brooks.

Such so-called “thinking” tells me that those who deny the link between the changing climate and human behavior have rocks in their heads.

media news

No plans to ID the latest shooting suspect

David Brooks is one of my favorite conservative columnists.

He writes for the New York Times and is a regular weekly contributor to PBS’s “NewsHour” and can be heard on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” evening news broadcast.

He said something today on NPR I want to endorse in a full-throated fashion. Brooks said in a discussion with E.J. Dionne, the Washington Post columnist, that he dislikes it when the media identify individuals suspected of mass shootings.

I agree. Wholeheartedly.

Thus, I won’t identify the young man arrested today after the Santa Fe High School massacre near Galveston. I didn’t ID the Sutherland Springs, Texas, shooter, or the Parkland, Fla., gunman, or the Las Vegas sniper, or the Orland, Fla., terrorist. And on and on …

Brooks’s rationale for asking that the media not ID these individuals is that he believes giving these individuals publicity emboldens future madmen from committing copy cat crimes.

Bingo, Mr. Brooks!

I’m in your corner.

Yes, I have posted the names of some of history’s more notorious assassins: Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray. Of those three, only Sirhan is still living. I see these individuals in a bit of a different light than the mass murderers who commit the heinous crimes that have become all too common place in contemporary society.

I accept fully David Brooks’s reason for seeking to refuse to give these alleged losers any more publicity than they deserve.

Which is none. Zero. Zip.

State news

Please, let’s not arm teachers

We’re heading into another “national conversation” about how to make our schools safer, about how to protect our children from gunmen who open fire in public school classrooms.

Santa Fe High School in Galveston County, Texas, has become the latest — and certainly not the last — flashpoint in that discussion.

Ten people are dead and 10 more are injured. A student has been taken into custody and has been charged with capital murder. He faces the death penalty if he’s convicted.

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, vowed to make our “schools safer.” Yes, Mr. President, we’re all for it.

Does that include arming teachers? For the umpteenth time, this blogger wants to say not just “no,” but “hell no!”

I am at a loss as to what the solution is. I remain convinced that there can be a legislative remedy found that keeps faith with the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I am not smart enough to concoct a solution from this keyboard.

However, I merely want to implore the president and other public officials to steer far, far away from a discussion about putting guns in teachers’ hands.

The National Rifle Association keeps harping on the notion that “the only way to protect us from bad guys with guns is to put guns in the hands of good guys.”

So, that’s the answer? The way to end gun violence is to put more guns out there? Such nonsense makes me want to scream.

I do not want to hear that. Instead, I want to hear some possible solutions that place reasonable — and constitutional — restrictions on individuals capable of doing harm to the rest of us.

State news

Tragedy strikes another school

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said today what many of us already believe: It’s not enough to offer “thoughts and prayers” to communities stricken by a spasm of gun violence. The time for action is at hand.

Yes, governor. You are so right.

Santa Fe High School near Galveston is reeling today in the wake of another school shooting. Ten people — most of them students — are dead; another 10 are injured, with a couple of the injured victims suffering life-threatening injuries.

The shooter, a student at the high school, is in custody.

By all means we offer our prayers. Now comes the hard part. What are we going do to stop this insanity?

Abbott said today that everything is on the table. Everything? Yep. That’s what he said. Everything. I’m going to presume he means what he says.

Putting something on the “table” does not guarantee anything substantive will arise from a serious discussion.

Gov. Abbott wants to convene a town hall meeting. He wants to talk to constituents. He said he is open to anything they have to offer.

The shooter’s father owned the weapons, a shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver. Here’s a thought for the governor to ponder: Stiffen liability punishment for parents who fail to do all they can to keep the guns out of the hands of their children. OK, that’s just a thought off the top of my noggin.

Is this yet another turning point? Has it supplanted the Parkland, Fla., carnage as the catalyst that will bring action in place of rhetoric?

I cannot wrap my head around all of this at the moment.

Lord have mercy on us all.

International news

‘Libya model’ in play … or not?

That didn’t take long.

Donald Trump brings John Bolton aboard just a few weeks ago to be national security adviser. Bolton, a noted hard-liner, then tell Fox News that the president will follow the “Libya model” in shaping U.S. policy with regard to North Korea’s nuclear program.

What does the president then do? In Bolton’s presence, he tells reporters he isn’t following the Libya model, that he’s going to craft a unique policy as it concerns efforts to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons.

“The Libyan model isn’t a model that we have at all, when we’re thinking of North Korea (DPRK),” Trump told reporters at the White House before meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

You see, the Libya model didn’t work out well for the late Moammar Gadhafi, the strongman who used to run Libya.

Rebels revolted there, overthrew Gadhafi, then captured him and dragged off to some location — and then killed him! He’s dead, man!

Do you think North Korea’s strongman, Kim Jong Un, wants to hear some comparison to the Libya model? I, um, do not believe so.

Trump is trying to preserve some semblance of hope that he and Kim will actually meet next month in Singapore to discuss a whole range of issues. It’s a big deal, this meeting. U.S. presidents and North Korean dictators have never met face to face.

Trump’s rhetoric about Kim has transformed from threats to “Little Rocket Man” to high praise for him as someone interested in forging an actual peace treaty with South Korea.

Then his national security adviser, Bolton, steps in it by referring to an event that ended badly for another world leader.

Let’s get our nation’s message straight, shall we?

national news

He’s the ‘Speak English Guy’

I guess we’re calling this individual the “Speak English Guy.”

It seems he wants everyone around to speak English. He has gone on rants in public, berating those who speak another language.

He has been heard to bellow, “This is America” as a way to, um, persuade those who speak another language to communicate in English.

Hold on here! What’s this guy trying to say?

The U.S. of A. does not have an official language. Yes, the U.S. Constitution is written in English, as is the Declaration of Independence. The Federalist Papers are in written in English. President Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address in English, and issued the Emancipation Proclamation in the same language.

Yes, this is America, as the Speak English Guy points out. Except that America represents people from around the globe. They all come here fluent first in the language of their country of origin.

I cannot help at this moment but think of my parents. They were born in the United States; Mom was born in Portland, Ore., Dad was born in New Kensington, Pa. Their parents — all of them — were from Greece and Turkey. They all were ethnic Greeks.

My grandparents spoke Greek in their homes. English, therefore, was a “second language” to my parents. Dad once told me how he ran home crying from kindergarten because he didn’t understand what everyone was saying in the classroom.

Well, Mom and Dad learned how to speak English. Their English language skills were impeccable; Mom was especially articulate in her English-speaking skills.

But they continued to converse with each other in Greek. They both were fluent in both their languages.

I wonder what might happen if Speak English Guy would have heard Mom and Dad speaking Greek to each other. My best guess in the event this guy decided to upbraid them because they weren’t speaking English: Dad would have cold-cocked that clown.

media news

What will become of ‘newspapers’?

I feel the need to put the word “newspapers” in quote marks because of a trend I am sensing.

It is that “newspapers” as we have known them — and some of us have revered them — are on their last legs. At least that is my sense.

Friends ask me all the time, even though I’ve been out of the full-time newspaper game for nearly six years, what I project for the craft I pursued for nearly four decades.

The term “newspaper” will become obsolete. Media organizations are going to have to come up with a new name for their method of distributing information and reporting on the news of the day. As a matter of fact, many newspapers no longer refer to the place where reporters and editors work as “newsrooms”; they call them “information centers,” or terms such as that. News “copy” is now called “content,” and newspapers themselves are now referred to as “the product.”

When will this occur? I don’t know. I fear the pace of that day’s arrival might be accelerating. The Salt Lake Tribune recently announced widespread layoffs; it is just the latest major metropolitan daily newspaper to scale back its work force in the face of plummeting circulation and advertising revenue.

So many others have gone through it.

The Amarillo Globe-News is one of them. I worked there for nearly 18 years. Then I quit in August 2012 in the midst of a company “reorganization.” Just this past year, the paper quit printing its daily editions in Amarillo; it’s being done in Lubbock, at the presses of another newspaper under the same corporate ownership.

Then in October of this past year, Morris Communications sold its entire chain of newspapers to GateHouse Media. The consolidation has continued, with the Lubbock and Amarillo newspapers operating under a single senior management team: a regional publisher and editor, both of who split their time between Amarillo and Lubbock.

Do you see a trend here? I don’t know where this will all end. I probably shouldn’t even care — but I do, having devoted my entire professional career to newspapers as we all knew them, grew up with them, loved them and hated them.

I will mourn the day they disappear.

national news

What became of America’s Mayor?

Rudolph Giuliani used to be a revered public figure. He stood tall amid the rubble of Ground Zero in lower Manhattan and rallied a stricken city in the wake of the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Center.

Time magazine named him Person of the Year in 2001. It was richly deserved. Giuliani became America’s Mayor.

Then something happened to him. He decided to get involved in national politics. He dressed in drag to spoof something or someone. He ran for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2008.

Rudy Giuliani has gotten a bit strange. If you saw his shtick at the 2016 Republican National Convention, then you understand my point. If you haven’t seen it, take a look:

His latest gig is as Donald J. Trump’s lawyer, representing the president as he does battle against what he calls the “witch hunt” being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Giuliani has managed to step all over Trump’s denial about hush money being paid to a porn star; he argues now that the president cannot be subpoenaed or indicted by the special counsel, even if Mueller produces evidence that Trump broke the law.

Giuliani has become a shill. He has behaved in a seriously unattractive manner as he defends the president against Mueller’s investigation in whether Trump obstructed justice or “colluded” with Russians who interfered in our 2016 presidential election.

Honestly, I much prefer the former Rudy Giuliani, the man who faced down terrorists while standing in the rubble.

The “new Rudy” is acting like a clown.