Monthly Archives: June 2018

International news

What if Obama had done this?

Barack H. Obama once stated he would be willing to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Those on the political right vilified the president for even suggesting such a thing. He’s naive, unprepared, too willing to surrender to the bad guys, they said.

Donald J. Trump came into office. He launched a name-calling campaign against Kim Jong Un. Then he accepted an invitation to meet with him. The president “canceled” the meeting, but then the two sides worked out their differences.

The right’s reaction? The president deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. He’s brilliant! He’s done the impossible!

Hey, I give the president kudos for meeting with Kim, although I concede that my view on that meeting had changed a bit from a year ago, when I said he shouldn’t meet with Kim. Sill, I hope it produces something constructive and, yes, peaceful!

If only the GOP “base” would have recognized what’s good for their guy also might have worked for his immediate predecessor.

Duplicitous.

International news

Tough to overstate significance of these talks

It is damn near impossible to overstate the significance of what the world witnessed a little while ago this evening.

Two men strode toward each other, extended their hands, with one of them grabbing the other man’s arm with his “off hand.”

The men are Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States, and Kim Jong Un, the dictator of North Korea.

What they said to each other in that private meeting — with no staff members present — remains a secret at this moment. We’ll find out likely as the president wings his way back home aboard Air Force One.

But … the meeting, the shaking of hands, the cautious smiles and courtesy between these men is a very big deal in and of themselves.

The United States and North Korea remain in a state of war. The Korean War didn’t “end” when the shooting stopped in 1953; the ceasefire merely ended the killing. There is no peace treaty. There’s no document that declares peace between South and North Korea.

Today’s monumental first step marks the first-ever meeting between the heads of state between the United States and North Korea.

Critics of the U.S.-North Korea summit say it gives legitimacy to a brutal dictator. Those who praise it say it might open the door to that long-awaited peace treaty — and it well might result eventually in a pact that persuades Kim Jong Un to “denuclearize” his arsenal.

His countrymen and women are starving. North Korea remains a desperately poor nation. Yet the dictator has continued to tons of money into a weapons system the country cannot afford.

Have we seen the beginning of a new era? Is there a possibility that the handshakes, the smiles and the apparent good tidings can produce something — anything! — of substance?

Well, a handshake is a start.

International news

Build that wall … up north!

Leave it to Fox News’s Shepard Smith to add a peculiar twist to the burgeoning war of words between Donald J. Trump and Justin Trudeau.

The news anchor wondered out loud whether we need to build a wall along our northern border with Canada, to complement the wall Trump wants to build along our southern border with Mexico.

Trump left the G-7 summit in Quebec after leveling threats against our major trading partners. He and the Canadian prime minister got into a particularly angry exchange, with Trump accusing Trudeau of double-crossing him after he left the summit.

Trudeau responded with threats of retaliation against the United States over the tariffs Trump has leveled against Canadian steel and aluminum. A Trump economic adviser, Peter Navarro, said there is a “special place in hell” for anyone who stabs the president “in the back.”

As the Daily Beast reported: “Our biggest trading partner in all the world, our best friend from way back in World War II and every time in between, Canada” Smith added, laughing for a moment before dropping this suggestion: “Maybe we need a Northern wall.”

Do you get my drift here?

Trump announced his presidential campaign by declaring that Mexico is “sending rapists, murderers and drug dealers” into our country. He said he would wall off the country from Mexico and make the Mexican government pay for it.

Is there another such threat awaiting the Canadians now if Trump and Trudeau keep exchanging heated insults across the world’s longest unsecured border?

Sports news

Don’t go, LeBron

I cannot possibly know what is going through LeBron James’s mind now as he ponders his future as a professional basketball player.

The man known as King James is considering whether to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for, oh, somewhere else. I keep hearing he’s being courted heavily by the Los Angeles Lakers, a team that once achieved greatness but which stinks to high heaven these days.

I’ll get right to the point. I don’t want James to leave Cleveland. I want him to stay put. He makes enough money as it is. The Cavs ain’t paying him chump wages.

Do you recall how his first stint with the Cavaliers ended? His contract expired. He entered the free agency market. Then he put together that goofy TV special, at the end of which he announced he would “take my talents to South Beach,” meaning to Miami, where he would play for the Heat.

The Cavs fans went nuts. They burned LeBron jerseys in public bonfires. They protested. They howled. They wept. They accused LeBron of the equivalent of sports franchise “treason.”

Then he did something quite remarkable. He decided at the end of his Miami contract to return to Cleveland. All was forgiven. The Cavs fans welcomed back their favorite son, who I should add was born and reared in nearby Akron.

What is the 33-year-old superstar going to do now? It’s anyone’s guess.

I’ve never been in the position of a supremely gifted athlete who can earn many millions of dollars annually for playing a game. LeBron James is a tremendous physical specimen. He plays basketball at a level rarely seen by anyone at any time — ever! — in this history of the sport. Some experts call him the “Greatest of All Time.”

He’s already fabulously wealthy.

However, it might be that at this moment, he’s still hurting from the four-game sweep from the NBA Finals he and the Cavs suffered at the hands of the Golden State Warriors.

But the sun came up the next day. He still has a supremely healthy bank account.

He also is at home. I wonder, therefore, what the home folks will think if he decides to abandon them a second time.

business news, local news

Let’s try ‘Sod Poodles Tower’

AMARILLO, Texas — OK, I’m just kidding about that suggestion to name the tower after Sod Poodles.

I mention it because of an announcement today that Amarillo’s tallest structure is slated to carry the name of another bank.

Chase left the ground floor of the 31-story tower and today it was announced that FirstBank Southwest is moving into Chase Bank’s first-floor office space.

FirstBank Southwest, pending federal approval, will be able to put its name on the top of the “tallest building between Fort Worth and Denver.”

The building known formerly as the Chase Tower will become the FirstBank Southwest Tower.

My question: For how long?

I’m not real crazy about corporations purchasing building-naming rights. What occasionally happens is what occurred when Chase left the tower. The building name came off the top of the skyscraper. Yet we still refer to the structure informally as the “Chase Tower.” Just mention the name and everyone in Amarillo knows what you’re talking about.

At least, though, the new bank is a locally owned outfit. I suppose that makes it more tolerable than some big corporate name being plastered on the side of what is among the city’s most recognizable downtown structures.

They’re going to name the city’s new minor-league baseball team later this year. I’ve already stated my case for Sod Poodles, which is among the five finalist names under consideration by the team owners.

My own preference for what it’s worth — and it’s not much these days, given that my wife and I now live elsewhere — would be to put a name more linked to the region than to some corporate entity.

Palo Duro Tower. Llano Estacado Tower. High Plains Tower. Canadian River Tower. Caprock Tower.

Just thinking out loud …

entertainment news

Not too clever, Mr. DeNiro

I always have thought the actor Robert DeNiro was more clever than what he demonstrated last night.

The one-time “Raging Bull” trooped to the microphone at the Tony Awards show and offered a pithy, profane “salute” to Donald J. Trump. I won’t repeat it here. The network cut the sound off as DeNiro blurted out an f-bomb before saying the president’s name.

OK, let me stipulate a couple of things here.

One is that I have thought what DeNiro said out loud many times since Trump was elected president. I might even have said it a time or two. Then again, I never have stood in front of millions of viewers around the world who tuned in to watch an awards show meant to salute theater performances.

The reaction of the theater crowd was so very predictable. They stood and cheered. I didn’t join them while watching the event in real time Sunday night. For starters, I didn’t know what DeNiro actually said until later in the evening.

The second point I want to make is that many of us could have predicted that someone would have delivered such an ultimate snark-filled epithet during the ceremony. The arts community’s feelings toward the president are well-known, thoroughly chronicled. ”

I guess I’m disappointed it came from an actor whose work I’ve enjoyed for years, perhaps dating back to “Godfather II” when he portrayed a young Vito Corleone.

Whatever. I share DeNiro’s sentiment. The forum and the manner he used to deliver it seemed so very boring. And, to be honest, it wasn’t terribly creative.

political news

‘Beclowned’ becomes newest cool word

Steve Schmidt clearly is a “never Trump” Republican.

He once worked for U.S. Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. He is a close personal friend of the stricken senator and no doubt has taken personally the insults that Donald J. Trump has tossed at Sen. McCain while the senator is battling a life-threatening illness.

Schmidt has coined perhaps the most interesting verb in recent political discourse. In a tweet, he wrote that the president has “beclowned” himself.

Beclowned? Yep. That’s the verb. Here is Schmidt’s entire tweet:

TRUMP disgraced the Presidency and the United States at the G-7 summit. From his slovenly appearance to his unpreparedness, ignorance and arrogance, he beclowned himself. The Republican majority is filled with cowards who are servile supplicants to the most unfit POTUS ever

I’ve never heard the term before. Let me know if you have.

My point here is that when you have a serious Republican saying such things about an ostensibly Republican president, then the target of these epithets would seem to have a problem. Except that such criticism not only rolls off Trump, it doesn’t register with those who continue to support this individual’s world view … such as it is!

Schmidt isn’t the world’s perfect political operative. He had a hand, after all, in persuading Sen. McCain to select Sarah Palin as his 2008 vice-presidential running mate. To his credit, Schmidt has owned up to the mistake he made.

However, Schmidt is making no mistake in asserting Donald Trump’s profound unfitness for the job he currently occupies.

International news

It’s the Russians, Mr. POTUS, who pose the threat

Donald J. Trump has called previous intelligence chiefs all sorts of bad names: liar, loser … you name it.

Dan Coats, though, is the current director of national intelligence. He once was a U.S. senator from Indiana. He’s a Republican. He’s a solid public servant. He said in a tweet that the “Russians are actively seeking to divide our Alliance, and we must not allow that to happen.”

He is a Trump appointee.

What has been the president’s response to his DNI’s assessment? Nothing. He’s not paying attention. He is instead denigrating our allies in Canada, Mexico, Germany, the UK, the European Union, Japan because — according to Trump — their trade policies pose a “national security threat” to the United States of America.

C’mon, Mr. President. DNI Coats has it right. You, sir, have it wrong!

The Russians want to break up the EU. They still fear the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, set up after World War II as a hedge against expansion from the Soviet Union and its bloc of Eastern European nations.

Coats has joined other intelligence officials in declaring that without a shred of doubt the Russians meddled in our 2016 presidential election. They all have declared, in one figure of speech or another, that the interference constituted a “direct attack” on our government and our electoral process.

Trump’s response? He keeps giving the Russians a pass all the while talking harshly about our trading partners and our military allies.

State news

No ‘sightseeing’ here, Mr. POTUS

This picture showed up on my Facebook news feed. It’s a page from today’s Houston Chronicle, the newspaper that has told the compelling, heartbreaking and heroic stories stemming from the Hurricane Harvey onslaught.

There’s a point here, of course. The headline refers to that idiotic comment the other day from Donald Trump, who suggested that Texans were out looking at the storm in their boats, causing the rash of water rescues rescues from first responders.

He was on that conference call with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials when he blurted out yet another thoughtless comment, this time about Hurricane Harvey.

The storm dumped 50 inches of rain on the Gulf Coast in the span of 24 hours this past summer. Gawkers? Rubberneckers? Is that what Trump said was occurring out there in the midst of the storm?

The Houston Chronicle has offered the perfect response.

national news

‘Two dictators’ set to meet?

There’s really not much to add to this latest tidbit from the mouth of a Fox News commentator.

Abby Huntsman referred to the upcoming summit between Donald J. Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un as a meeting between “two dictators.”

Oops!

Huntsman has apologized. She just, um, “misspoke.”

Check it out here.

She wrote on Twitter: “Apologized on the show. I’ll never claim to be a perfect human being. We all have slip ups in life, I have many. Now let’s all move on to things that actually matter.”

Whatever you say, Ms. Huntsman. A lot of Americans — millions of us, actually — kind of think she spoke the truth.