Monthly Archives: August 2018

national news, political news, State news

This Senate race is getting white hot and nasty

BUTTE, Mont. — We’re stopped at our third Montana RV park and are enjoying some local TV … including some pretty nasty political ads being fired back and forth between Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and his Republican opponent, state auditor Matt Rosendale.

My wife and I have been out of Texas for about two weeks. We’ve parked our RV in West Yellowstone and Missoula, Mont. I’m wondering if we’re going to see such vitriol flying soon from the Senate campaigns of Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz.

The Republican is accusing Tester — a guy I’ve always considered to be a Second Amendment-loving moderate Democrat — of being a closet clone of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Bernie “Democratic Socialist” Sanders.

Rosendale has tied himself to Donald John Trump. He calls himself a “Trump conservative,” which if I lived in Montana would be enough all by itself for me to support Tester.

Most of the negativity is coming from Rosendale. Tester is saying he approves the TV ads “even if Washington doesn’t like it.”

I guess I like Tester partially because of his haircut, which is a sort of buzz-cut flat-top ‘do.

Policy-wise, he is a moderate. He supports retaining the Affordable Care Act, which hardly is a poisonous policy position by my standard.

Sure, Montana is a Trump state. The president has campaigned for Rosendale. Given the troubles that are mounting for the president, my sense is that his support for a candidate — even one here in this bastion of the Wild West — is a mixed blessing at best.

Well, it’s my hope anyway.

As for O’Rourke and Cruz … take it away, boys.

Donald Trump

McCain ‘partially to blame’ for WH flag mess? Uh, huh

U.S. Sen. James Inhofe says the late Sen. John McCain is “partially to blame” for the White House messing up the protocol of lowering flags to honor the Arizona Republican who died over the weekend.

Partially to blame? Well, let’s explore that briefly.

The White House staff had difficulty deciding when to lower the flags to honor the late senator. But, according to Inhofe, McCain could be crusty, a bit mean and rude. He spoke angrily to and about Donald J. Trump. Thus, the blame for the White House protocol SNAFU falls partially on the senator.

“We are dealing with a hero when we deal with Senator McCain,” Inhofe said. “He wasn’t always the most lovable person to be around, but he was a fighter and never shied away from a good fight.”

What crap!

Everyone in Washington knows about Sen. McCain’s occasional temper bursts. Yes, he could be harsh. However, Donald Trump started this feud with that hideous, ridiculous and ghastly statement that McCain was a Vietnam War hero “only because he was captured. I like people who aren’t captured, OK?”

It went downhill from there.

I don’t accept the notion that Sen. McCain is “partially to blame,” or even to blame just a tiny bit for the president’s lack of class and dignity. Trump has disrespected McCain at every turn ever since the “only because he was captured” idiocy during the 2016 presidential campaign.

John McCain served this country in myriad ways that are totally foreign to Donald Trump’s life prior to his becoming a politician.

I am one American who stands foursquare behind the fallen senator.

Donald Trump

White House makes a mess of standard tribute

Let’s call it what it appears to be: a major-league clusterf***.

Someone at the White House — where Donald J. Trump resides with his wife and young son — lowered the flag atop the building to half-staff immediately after U.S. Sen. John McCain’s death this past weekend.

Then the flag went back to the top of the staff.

And then it came down again today. The president issued a “thoughts and prayers” statement to Sen. McCain’s family initially, and then issued a statement saying that despite the two men’s differences over “politics and policy,” the president said “I respect his service” to the country.

Gosh. Overwhelming, yes? Well … no. It isn’t. But you know that already.

Read CNN.com’s report here.

Actually, the president has yet to make any kind of statement saluting the late senator’s enormous contributions to his nation, his 60 years of public service — including his more than five years as a Vietnam War prisoner as a captive of North Vietnam. Trump denigrated McCain’s war service and the heroism he displayed while being held captive. And as McCain fought the cancer that killed him, Trump continued to blast the senator over his “no” vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Of course, McCain issued a directive that the president shouldn’t attend his funeral. Instead, the senator asked former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to deliver eulogies in his honor. And, yes, Vice President Mike Pence — a former congressional colleague of Sen. McCain — will represent the Trump administration.

Dear reader, we are witnessing yet again the clumsiness and ineptitude of the Donald J. Trump administration over a ceremonial duty that should be second nature.

Shameful.

national news

If LBJ could attend RFK’s funeral …

What makes the Donald Trump exclusion from John McCain’s funeral so very bizarre is that their hatred for each other barely rivals the open hostility felt between two other political giants that didn’t interfere one of them from paying tribute to the other.

President Lyndon Johnson hated Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. The feeling was quite mutual. Yet when RFK was gunned down in Los Angeles in June 1968, LBJ found time to deliver a televised statement saluting Sen. Kennedy’s service to the country.

Then he took the time to attend RFK’s funeral in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

Sen. McCain made it clear he didn’t want the president to attend his funeral. It would be in the president’s best interests to heed the late, great American war hero’s desire.

The LBJ-RFK rift, though, and the fact that the president paid his respects to the late senator makes this latest statement of mistrust and disrespect so darn strange.

Donald Trump, national news

Disinvited to a leading senator’s funeral?

I cannot remember this ever happening: a president of the United States is disinvited to the funeral of a leading political figure … of his own political party at that!

They’ll have a funeral soon for the late Sen. John McCain — and, yes, it’s strange to type the word “late” in front of this man’s name — but the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has been told not to attend. McCain reportedly said he didn’t want the president there.

The two men had serious political differences to be sure. However, Trump took it to a different level. He denigrated the senator’s Vietnam War record; and while McCain was fighting the cancer that killed him, he continued to rail against him for casting a “no” vote that preserved the Affordable Care Act.

McCain had enough. He let it be known he didn’t want Trump at his funeral.

I don’t know what the president will do. His presence will serve as a serious distraction, given all the trouble he is in on so many fronts.

I just hope Sen. McCain will get the farewell he deserves from men and women he respected — and who respected him in return.

local news

In and out of service to post items for blog

COULEE CITY, Wash. — I knew it would happen … eventually.

We travel to hither and yon and we land in a spot where Internet service is, at best, spotty. Therefore, I am unable to post regularly on High Plains Blogger.

It’s driving me a bit batty. Blogging is what I do these days. So much to say. Feeling pressured by my own self to get my thoughts out there.

We’ll be returning to “civilization” soon. We’ll have more regular access to whatever waves enable folks like me to post musings on blogs.

Bear with me if you’re at all interested in what I might have to say. To those who aren’t interested in the least, well, enjoy your break.

national news

Sen. McCain will lie in state where he belongs

John McCain will rank as one of the U.S. Senate’s greatest men. Thus, it is wholly appropriate that he lie in state under the Capitol Rotunda while a nation he served with such distinction pays tribute to him.

The Arizona Republican died Saturday of brain cancer. He declared his intention only a day earlier that he would no longer receive treatment for the disease.

There will be plenty of tributes pouring in to honor this former Vietnam War prisoner, naval aviator and titan of Congress, where he served in both the House and Senate.

I remain deeply saddened that his voice has been stilled forever.

However, I also am proud that he will lie in state in the place where he served with honor for more than three decades.

national news

Rest in peace, American hero

A man who would become president once denigrated U.S. Sen. John McCain’s service to the country, saying he was a “hero only because he was captured.”

Well, to the rest of us, Sen. McCain was the real deal. An authentic hero who endured torture at the hands of his captors during the Vietnam War. He fought struggle after struggle until he won his freedom more than five years later.

His struggle is now over. John McCain’s death today at the age of 81 ends a great man’s career in public service. First in the U.S. Navy, then as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives then as the U.S. senator. In 2008 he ran for president, won the Republican Party’s nomination and fought hard before losing to a fellow senator, Barack Obama of Illinois.

Sen. McCain will be remembered for his tenacity, his grit, his courage and, yes, his heroism.

This is a sad day. It’s also a day to express pride in the spirit of a great American warrior.

environmental news, local news

Wondering about the ‘Big Sky’ label

INTERSTATE 90, Mont. — I couldn’t stop thinking about the “Big Sky Country” label that someone long ago hung on Montana.

The sky is ample, I suppose. But as we drove from Missoula through Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and Spokane, Wash., I was struck by the sight of all those tall mountains throughout out trek — especially those that towered next to the highway in Montana.

The mountains soared seemingly forever into the sky, rising maybe 9,000 or 10,000 feet above sea level.

The thought occurred to me: Those magnificent mountains impede the volume of sky one would see if we were traveling along more, um, flat terrain.

Thus, the “big sky” isn’t quite so, um, big … you know?

I’ve long noted that the Texas Panhandle, where my wife and I lived for 23 years before our move this spring to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, is the real big sky country. The sun is in the sky forever. It sets well past 9 p.m. during the peak of the summer.

It’s huge, man!

The Montana sky — when it isn’t covered in smoke, as it as today — is pretty enough. It just isn’t nearly as big as the High Plains sky I grew accustomed to seeing daily for more than two decades.

OK, maybe the Montana sky finds its bigness farther east, where it lacks mountains to jut skyward into the big sky.

But I find it hard to imagine how its size could compare with the sky with that envelops the vast landscape I used to call “home.”

medical news

Sen. McCain faces the final fight

The news was expected, but it remains a stunner nevertheless.

U.S. Sen. John McCain today announced he is terminating treatment to fight the aggressive brain cancer that has kept him at home for several months. He has fought the good fight, but as he noted in his statement, age (he is 81) and the cancer have taken their toll.

He doesn’t want to fight any longer.

This saddens me terribly. It should sadden all Americans who understand the sacrifice this man has made in the line of duty to the country he loves. He has spent more than 50 years serving his country: as a Naval aviator, a U.S. House member, a U.S. senator and a Republican presidential nominee.

He was shot down in 1967 over Hanoi during the height of the Vietnam War and taken prisoner. He served heroically — despite the claims of one prominent GOP politician.

Did I agree with Sen. McCain’s politics, his policy, his philosophy? No. This blog post, though, pays tribute to his service, his courage, his fortitude, guts, perseverance and dedication to country.

I know it’s no longer plausible to wish this brave warrior a full recovery. Glioblastoma is, in the words of Sen. McCain’s good friend former Vice President Joe Biden, “as bad as it gets.” However, the former VP has spoken often in the past about his friend’s courage in the face of insurmountable odds.

There is a lesson to be learned here. Politicians who cannot summon the courage to do the right thing when the chips are down need to steal a page from John McCain’s book of life’s lessons.

He is, as CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer described him this morning when the news broke, “a great American.”

May he find comfort and strength in the days ahead knowing that the nation is praying for him.