Monthly Archives: July 2018

national news

Meghan McCain won’t ‘forgive’ POTUS … good!

Meghan McCain clearly loves her father with all her heart.

Thus, she is taking a deserved hard line against the man who has disparaged, disrespected and disregarded her war-hero dad.

U.S. Sen. John McCain is battling brain cancer. He has faced down the toughest foes imaginable, given his more than five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

So, when Donald John Trump insults Sen. McCain — and doesn’t ever rebuke a White House staffer who did so as well — one can expect the senator’s daughter to take it personally.

Meghan McCain has become a celebrity in her own right, as a co-host of “The View.” She said this recently about the president, according to Time.com: “[Trump’s] comments are never going to be OK with me, especially at this moment in my life. I’m never going to forgive it,” the co-host of ABC’s The View said on stage. “I’m never going to move on from it.”

Why should she?

Trump once disparaged McCain’s Vietnam War service by saying he is a hero “only because he was captured.” Then he has continued to harp on the senator’s thumbs-down gesture that doomed Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

And then we had the gem fly out of the mouth of former White House aide Kelly Sadler after McCain urged his Senate colleagues to reject Gina Haspel as the CIA director, given her role in torturing enemy combatants. “It doesn’t matter” what McCain said, Sadler muttered. “He’s dying anyway.”

Has the president called Sadler out? No. He got angry because her comments were leaked.

Meghan McCain said this, too: “If anyone wants to say anything to me in any way, they have to do it publicly,” she said. “I don’t take private phone calls from the Trump Administration anymore.

As for Sadler’s crack, Meghan McCain said this: “Kelly … it is not how you die. It is how you live.”

John McCain has lived a life of public service that is totally foreign to the president of the United States. I, too, admire Sen. McCain’s sacrifice in defense of our nation.

As for his daughter’s declaration that she cannot “forgive” the way the president has treated her father, I am in her corner.

medical news

‘Men have breasts, too’

My wife and I encountered an old friend in Amarillo over the weekend and came away with a stunning realization.

Our friend, a middle-aged man, is a recovering breast cancer patient. Not only that, he has become an outspoken advocate for men who find themselves in the same predicament he confronted just recently.

He was manning a booth along Sixth Avenue on Saturday during the city’s annual Route 66 Celebration. We made eye contact simultaneously and greeted each other warmly. I hadn’t seen Kenny for many years, and I knew only a little about his diagnosis, as I read a column he had written to tell the public about it.

I have some fairly intimate knowledge of this disease. My mother was diagnosed twice with breast cancer; I have a cousin who’s been battling it for years; one of my nieces has suffered from it as well.

They’re all women.

Kenny is part of an organization called the Male Breast Cancer Coalition. It was founded by Bret Miller (pictured), who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 17. He went through a mastectomy and all the requisite post-operative therapies. Miller also vowed that “no man would feel alone when facing a breast cancer diagnosis.”

Miller’s organization has set aside one week in October as Male Breast Cancer Awareness Week; indeed, cancer awareness organizations recognize the entire month recognizes breast cancer, with media reporting extensively about women who have fought the battle successfully against the killer disease.

Miller has allies such as my friend Kenny to get the word out, that — in the words of the brochure that my friend handed out — “Men have breasts, too.”

Men often are reluctant to talk openly about this form of cancer, as it attacks women primarily. I guess is a male macho malady. My old pal Kenny is stepping up.

I am proud of my friend.

International news

What about those nuke sites, Mr. President?

The question of the day for Donald John Trump Sr. is this: Do you still believe Kim Jong Un is to be trusted after he promised to “work toward” ending his nuclear weapons ambitions?

Those darn satellite surveillance pictures generally don’t lie. They are revealing that the North Koreans are accelerating their nuclear weapons development, not scaling them back as Kim supposedly promised when he and Trump met in Singapore.

Trump came out of that meeting singing the praises of the guy he once disparaged as Little Rocket Man. He sounded so trusting of the guy, kind of like the way he sounds when talking about Russian strongman/president Vladimir Putin.

One doesn’t “make America great again” by being made to look like a fool on the world stage, Mr. President.

media news

Newspaper pushes back against POTUS

The Annapolis (Md.) Capital Gazette has laid it on the line.

In a letter made public this weekend, the newspaper said it won’t forget that Donald J. Trump has continually labeled the media “the enemy of the American people.”

“We won’t forget being called an enemy of the people,” the staff wrote. “No, we won’t forget that. Because exposing evil, shining light on wrongs and fighting injustice is what we do.”

A gunman armed with a shotgun walked into the Capital Gazette newsroom this past week and killed five employees. Four of them were journalists; the fifth was a sales assistant.

The suspect isn’t cooperating with the police who arrested him. Thus, we don’t yet know with absolute certainty what motivated him to open fire on the Capital Gazette. Yes, he lost a defamation lawsuit he had filed against the newspaper.

But the Capital Gazette has leveled a thinly veiled response to Trump’s continual verbal assault on the media.

Yes, the president issued appropriate remarks condemning the attack against the newspaper, saying that journalists “like all Americans” deserve the right to do their jobs without being “violently attacked.”

But according to The Hill: CNN’s John Berman called the president out on air for using the phrase “violently attacked,” saying that he “clearly has no problem at all verbally attacking journalists.”

It is long past time to tone down the anti-media rhetoric. Are you up to the challenge, Mr. President?

entertainment news, national news, Sports news

LeBron off to La La Land

LeBron James has broken the hearts of his hometown pro basketball fans once again.

The best basketball player on the planet is leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers a second time — for Los Angeles, where he has just signed a $154 million deal over the next four years to play for the Lakers, a once-great team that has hit the skids in recent seasons. So help me, the amount of money simply boggles my mind.

He started his pro career playing for the Cavs. Then he bolted to Miami — after a good bit of phony melodrama — where he won a couple of NBA titles with the Heat. LeBron, who was born in nearby Akron, returned to Cleveland, where he took the Cavs to an NBA title of their own. I was impressed by his declaration that he wanted to return home, where he reportedly took a cut in pay.

I’ll give “King James” credit for this latest departure from Cleveland: At least this time he didn’t put together a TV special at the end of which he declares, “I’m taking my talents to Tinseltown.”

national news

How does POTUS appeal to religious voters?

1 Comment

David Cay Johnston won a Pulitzer Prize some years ago. He considers himself to be a student of Donald J. Trump, having covered him for 30 years.

He sat down for an interview with Salon magazine. Much of his interview has been posted online. I want to break out a few segments of it in the days ahead. Today, I want to post some comments he made about the president’s baffling appeal among Christians.

Johnston told Salon the following:

I think it is very important for religious Americans to know that Donald Trump says that his personal philosophy of life is revenge. He has called anyone who turns the other cheek — which is a fundamental teaching of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount — a fool, an idiot or a schmuck. Trump is a man who says things that are absolutely contrary to the teachings of the New Testament. He also denigrates Christians. Yet you see all of these ministers endorsing him.

This lies at the heart of one of the most bizarre aspects of the “base” that continues to hang tightly onto the president.

Yes, I get that he possesses enormous power to appoint judges who will rule from the bench favorably in the eyes of evangelical voters.

Yet they continue to give him a pass on some of his own many personal failings. The serial philandering. The sexual assault to which he has admitted. The hideous mocking of people with disabilities.

He has acknowledged as well that he’s never sought forgiveness. As Johnston noted in his remarks to Salon:

I’ve followed Donald for 30 years. I don’t see any evidence that he has changed, and he certainly hasn’t repented, which is a fundamental Christian obligation.

Someone will have to explain to me in detail how this liar continues to enjoy the support among those who profess their own deep religious convictions.

***

Here is the rest of the Salon interview.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 113: Adult supervision anyone?

I don’t normally like discussing adult supervision in this blog, but since my High Plains Blogger profile talks about “life experience,” I want to offer a brief glimpse of what my wife and I witnessed on a quick trip back to Amarillo, Texas.

We saw first hand how adults should and should not handle minors under their supervision.

First, the “should not” example.

We were parked for three nights at an RV park in far west Amarillo. One afternoon, some kids walked by our fifth wheel and one of them pounded on the door. The noise upset Toby the Puppy. My wife and I went outside and confronted one of the boys and told him to quit doing that.

The boy kind of smirked back at me and said the culprit was a friend of his, who was nowhere to be seen. Fine. Then I said, “Just knock it off.”

Late that night, we turned in around 11 p.m. All three of us had gone to bed. Then came another knock on the door. The Puppy got upset again. We went outside. No sign of the kids.

Ah, but then we noticed an RV parked across the road from ours. We believed it belonged to the coach/dad who was accompanying the boys, who were part of a baseball team that was in Amarillo to play in a tournament; the visitors are from western Oklahoma.

We knocked on his door. Coach/Dad answered. “Are you the coach of the boys here?” my wife asked. “Yes.” Then we told him about what had just happened. He was mortified. One of those kids is his son, he said. He grabbed his cell phone and called his son. “Get back to the trailer — right now!” he said.

The kids returned. We went back to our RV. We watched the kids enter their trailer. We’ll presume Coach/Dad gave them a serious tongue-lashing.

Two quick points I want to make here: One is that the boys had no good reason to be out wandering through an RV park at 11 p.m. The adults should have reeled them in much earlier. The kids also should have been made to apologize for disturbing us; they didn’t do it.

Shame on Coach/Dad.

This morning we had breakfast at a restaurant near our Amarillo RV park. We ate our meal with our son. Then we finished, got up and walked toward the door. We noticed a group of Boy Scouts sitting quietly. They were eating their meal, too. We hardly knew they were in the room.

Those boys were exhibiting discipline, decorum and good manners.

Good job to their scoutmaster.

There. Rant over. We’re back home in Fairview. I’m quite certain no one is going to beat on our door in the wee hours.

legal news, national news, political news

‘Swing vote’ will switch chairs at SCOTUS

Before we get all worked up and apoplectic over the individual who will get Donald J. Trump’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, let’s consider the reality of the departing justice, Anthony Kennedy.

Kennedy has been hailed as a crucial “swing vote” on the court. He sides with liberals on occasion, but mostly sides with the conservative majority.

It’s good to understand that the conservative justices hold a 5-4 majority on the court. That majority won’t change.

Indeed, I am of the opinion that’s being shared that the next swing vote will likely belong to none other than Chief Justice John Roberts, who on occasion has sided with the liberal bloc of justices on key decisions, such as the ruling that upheld the Affordable Care Act.

The court’s conservative-liberal balance won’t change fundamentally, in my view, with whoever the president nominates.

The serious crap storm is going to erupt in the event one of the court’s liberal justices decides to call it a day.

However, the president’s selection — which he plans to announce on July 9 — is no doubt going to endure the kind of public scrutiny not seen since, oh, Robert Bork was defeated in 1987.

The symmetry of that fact also is fascinating.

The U.S. Senate rejected Bork’s nomination; then Douglas Ginsburg pulled out after admitting to smoking weed while in college. President Reagan’s third pick for the court? Anthony Kennedy.

national news, political news

Hey, POTUS just ‘tells it like it is’

Donald John Trump’s tweet storms are overwhelming him.

Slate.com reports that the president has just denied saying something he actually said via Twitter three days ago.

The Slate.com article is here.

He said this weekend that he never asked Republicans in Congress to vote on an immigration bill.

But, but, but …

Three days earlier, in an all-capital-letter tweet — to emphasize the point, I guess — he did encourage Republicans to do precisely the very thing he would deny urging them to do.

Is this just the president “telling it like it is”?

To me, it is the president fumbling, bumbling and stumbling his way around a process of which he has zero understanding.

Weird.

local news

Young people have fallen silent again

I want to share this blog post once again. I’ve attached it to this item.

It speaks to the dreams of young Amarillo residents who took their case to the City Council. They pitched the idea of building a multipurpose event venue, of erecting a downtown convention hotel and of turning Polk Street into an entertainment district.

They wanted the city to deliver a reason for these young people to stay here after school. They don’t want to move away.

The good news? Much of what the young’ns argued for is happening.

The bad news? They’ve reduced their public presence. What happened to ’em?

https://highplainsblogger.com/2015/06/city-hears-from-the-young-and-until-now-the-silent/

They have fallen silent yet again.