Monthly Archives: September 2018

national news

Sen. Kyl is his own man, however …

It didn’t take Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey long to fill an important seat in the U.S. Senate.

He picked a one-time former senator, Jon Kyl, to succeed the late, great John McCain in the upper congressional chamber. It’s a solid, mainstream selection, with one conservative Republican succeeding another conservative Republican.

A part of me, though, wishes something different from Sen. Kyl, who rejoins his colleagues.

Sen. McCain, who died on Aug. 25 of brain cancer, was known as a maverick. He was courageous and unafraid to challenge partisan orthodoxy within his own GOP. He incurred the wrath of far-right conservatives who actually, with a straight face, accused McCain of being a RINO, a Republican in Name Only; such a preposterous notion is laughable on its face.

McCain sought a return to “regular order” in the Senate. He despaired of the cult of personality that has taken over many within the Republican Party, which has become the Party of Donald Trump. His clashes with the president — stemming in part from the insults and the disparagement that Donald Trump would hurl at McCain — became legendary.

My hope for Jon Kyl is that he follows his predecessor’s lead. He isn’t known to be as feisty as McCain could be when the occasion presented itself. Then again, he is occupying a seat once held by a man who became legendary in the Senate for the battles he fought with Democrats and Republican.

I realize fully that Sen. Kyl is his own man. He also works for Arizona’s 7 million residents. Perhaps many of them will express their view that Sen. Kyl pick up where Sen. McCain left off.

May the new senator give the president all the hell he deserves.

Donald Trump

Mixed feelings about Obama’s return to the arena

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I must admit to harboring some deeply mixed — and often conflicting — feelings about former President Obama’s return to the public arena.

The ex-president today went to Champaign, Ill., and singled out his successor, Donald J. Trump, by name. He was directly critical of the president, saying that Trump isn’t the “cause” of what ails the nation, but is a “symptom” of it.

Why the mixed feelings?

I have stated already that I support the post-presidency profiles adopted by George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. That is, they chose to remain silent while their immediate successors — Bill Clinton and Obama, respectively — assumed the reins of power. It was Bush 41 who said that he had had his time in the spotlight, and it was time to get out of the way.  Bush 43 said essentially the same way when he moved aside after the 2008 election.

However, these are different times. We are now governed by a profoundly different sort of president. Donald Trump has continually blasted the policies of his immediate predecessor and spoken untruths about the impact of Obama’s presidency on the nation he led for eight years.

And as Barack Obama said today, Trump has refused to stand up to (a) Russian hackers who attacked our electoral system in 2016, (b) Nazis and other white supremacists and (c) bullies of any stripe.

So, he’s back in the arena. Obama likely is going to energize to disparate wings of the political spectrum: those who oppose the current president’s policies and those who support them.

I also want to join others who’ve said already that it’s a joy to listen to a former president who can speak to the nation in cogent, declarative sentences. Barack Obama’s eloquence stands in the starkest consequence to the mindless rambling we hear from his immediate successor.

***

Here are Obama’s remarks. Spoiler alert: It’s a long video. If you have the time, listen to it.

local news, political news, State news

You go, Rep. Four Price!

It would be presumptuous of me in the extreme to assume that state Rep. Four Price of Amarillo read a recent blog post of mine and then decided to run for speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

Whatever, my friend has joined a growing gaggle of politicians seeking to succeed Speaker Joe Straus as the Man of the House.

I applaud him for taking the plunge.

Price joins four fellow Republicans and a Democrat in the speaker’s race.

I’ve already stated my bias. Price is my friend and, thus, my admiration for his legislative skill is tainted somewhat by my personal affection for him. Still, the young man has cast a large shadow over the 150-member Texas House since he joined that body in 2011.

“Having successfully worked for the last four sessions with my colleagues from across our state to pass major legislation and focus on issues of importance to all Texans, I am eager to seek this leadership position in the Texas House of Representatives,” he said in a statement. “Looking towards the future, I truly believe the Texas House will play a leading role in making the decisions that keep Texas on the path to prosperity.”

I am quite certain Price knows what becoming speaker would mean to his role as a “part-time citizen legislator.” It means he would become nothing of the sort. House speakers essentially become full-timers, on call 24/7 to the media, to fellow pols, to constituents who live far beyond their legislative districts.

I find it impossible to believe that Price has failed to build sufficient political alliances within the House to make a serious run for the speakership.

With all the talk we keep hearing about the shifting power balance in Texas, as rural districts such as the one Price represents in the Texas Panhandle lose their clout, a Four Price speakership could produce a boon to the often-overlooked region way up yonder at the top of Texas.

So, good hunting, Rep. Price as you scour your colleagues for the support you’ll need as you seek to run the show in the Texas House.

Donald Trump

Loyalty to what … not to whom

We’re hearing a lot these days about the word “loyalty.”

As Donald Trump fumes and seethes over the publication of an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, the president and his allies keep talking about the “disloyalty” exhibited in the essay from a “resistance movement” inside the White House that seeks to protect the nation from Trump’s more dangerous impulses.

I am aware of the oaths that all these individuals take when they assume their public service jobs. The loyalty they pledge isn’t to the man, but to the law, to the U.S. Constitution and there’s an implied loyalty to citizens of the country.

Trump’s insistence of personal loyalty is misplaced and is the result of a man with no experience in public service.

It’s been reportedly widely for more than a year that the president fired FBI Director James Comey when he couldn’t extract a personal loyalty pledge from Comey. Attorney General Jeff Sessions seems to have been held to the same standard when he took the job as AG; when he recused himself from probe into “the Russia thing,” the president took that as an act of personal disloyalty.

A president who worked exclusively in the private sector prior to becoming a national politician doesn’t understand the implications of the oath he and his lieutenants take.

Once more, with feeling: These men and women pledge loyalty to the nation, its laws and the Constitution — not to the man at the top of the executive branch chain of command.

local news

Nice surprise in Texas travel magazine

I have subscribed off and on to Texas Highways magazine for about the past, oh, 30 years … give or take.

My latest issue arrived in the mail while my wife and I were traveling west to Yellowstone National Park, Wyo., and Grand Coulee Dam, Wash.

I looked at the cover title, “Small Town Splendor: The Best Little Courthouses in Texas,” opened the magazine and found something that surprised the daylights out of me. One of the mag’s “best little courthouses” happens to be the Potter County Courthouse in downtown Amarillo.

Why is that a surprise? I expected the list to include really small town courthouses. Among the other 11 featured in the magazine, by the way, is the Donley County Courthouse in Clarendon — which is beautiful structure, too. Texas Highways notes: “The Panhandle’s oldest functioning courthouse, it boasts a distinctive asymmetrical design — no two sides of the building are the same.”

Amarillo ain’t a “small town,” with a population right at 200,000 residents.

The Potter County Courthouse and the grounds on which it sits have become part of downtown Amarillo’s revival about which I have written extensively on this blog. The structure, built in 1932, is “what the Texas Historical Commission calls one of Texas’ best examples of art deco design.

The county applied for a state historical preservation grant to help restore the building. The county emptied the building, moved offices to other locations throughout the downtown district — including the Santa Fe Building and into the Courts Building, which former County Judge Arthur Ware refers to unflatteringly as the “grain elevator.”

The three-year project was done in 2012. The county moved the offices back into the building. County Judge Nancy Tanner established a security system for visitors.

The courthouse grounds have become the home field for downtown’s High Noon on the Square every summer, which features local musicians and other artisans entertaining lunchtime crowds.

The structure really is a gorgeous place for Potter County’s public servants to work.

Thus, I was heartened to see Texas Highways offer a tribute to downtown Amarillo’s courthouse.

Donald Trump

Op-ed writer has committed ‘treason’? Good grief!

Let me see if I have this right.

Someone within the Donald J. Trump administration writes a commentary, submits it to the New York Times, which the newspaper publishes anonymously. It speaks to chaos and panic within the White House and to an administration “resistance” movement to shield the nation from the president’s more impulsive instincts.

The president gets so angry he demands that the NYT release the writer’s name so that he or she can be turned over “to the government.”

For what? To be prosecuted for, um, an unspecified “crime”? The president is off his rocker. He’s gone ’round the bend. He’s off the rails.

The writer — whoever he or she is — has every right to speak his or her mind. The U.S. Constitution guarantees it. They committed not a single act of “treason,” which the president alluded to in a Twitter message.

Many of Trump’s senior advisers are running away from the op-ed, saying they didn’t write it. Not all of them have offered the denial.

What is so remarkable and, frankly, disgraceful is that Trump is categorizing this act as “treasonous.” One can question the ethics of publishing an anonymous essay; one also can question the courage of the author who refused to put a name on the submission. Those are legitimate debating points.

However, treason is way off the mark. It is beyond the pale. For the president to imply a threat that the op-ed author should be arrested and detained speaking his or her mind reveals — yet again — total ignorance of what is contained in the U.S. Constitution.

national news

Identity of op-ed author will be known … then what?

I am trying to put myself in the shoes of the president of the United States.

Someone in his inner circle of executive authority has blown the whistle. Someone has written an anonymously published op-ed column that contends that Donald John Trump — the president himself — is a danger to the nation he was elected to govern.

Trump is outraged. He is looking high and low for the identity of who wrote it. I have this feeling in my gut that he well might know as I write this brief blog post.

The op-ed speaks to “whispers” about invoking the 25th Amendment to relieve the president — temporarily, of course — of his duties as commander in chief. It talks about how White House aides are alarmed at Trump’s impulsive behavior, his lack of knowledge or his desire to learn about the complex issues of the day.

Trump will find out who it is.

Does he fire the individual? Does he then release that individual to tell the world everything he or she knows? What kind of damage can be done at that point if Trump lets his rage command how he responds to this matter?

The New York Times took a highly unusual step in allowing this essay into print without the author’s name attached to it. The Times’s editors did so knowing who the individual is and what he or she does for the Trump administration.

Yes, there’s been some push back on the granting of anonymity. Some critics say the author should have the courage to stand by his words. Others have criticized the NYT for granting anonymity in the first place.

I stand with the publication as it was delivered to the nation.

I also believe we’re going to know in due course — probably quite soon — who this “senior White House official” really is.

Yes, all hell will break loose — and it well might validate precisely the points that the essayist made in writing it.

Read the essay here. It’s worth your time. Honest.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 122: No ‘organized activities,’ please

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You know already that my wife and I have returned to our “roots,” if you want to call it that.

We started our life together 47 years ago in a two-bedroom apartment in southeast Portland, Ore. We have returned to an apartment lifestyle in Fairview, Texas. We sold our house in Amarillo and decided — after relatively little discussion — to hang on to our dough and use it to travel; the idea of assuming a mortgage at our age didn’t appeal to us.

And that brings me to the point of this blog post.

While we were shopping for an apartment to call “home,” we entertained the idea of living in one of those “active adult communities,” you know, the places that restrict residence to those who are at least 55 years of age.

We visited some complexes in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. We chatted with enthusiastic young marketing professionals who sought to impress us with all the “benefits” of living in such a community.

Perhaps you know what they are: quiet surroundings, well-kept property, easy access to amenities.

Then came this one: group activities. You know, tours, shopping sprees, various and sundry outings with our peers.

My wife and I would look at each other fairly routinely when we heard about all of that; we would nod, thank the marketing whiz for his or her time and be on our way.

It then dawned on both of us at about the same time: We might be old, but we don’t want to be treated like two old people. I am about to turn 69 years of age; my wife is, shall we say, a little younger than I am. We remain in good health. We want to enjoy our recreational vehicle. We intend to make ample use of it now that we have all this time time on our hands.

I don’t feel like a fuddy-duddy. Neither does my wife.

There might come a day when we need to relocate once more to one of those “communities” that feature group activities and, all that blah, blah, blah. We both are acutely aware that time isn’t necessarily our ally.

Just not yet.

media news

Language might give away author’s ID

MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell has posited an “educated guess” on who he thinks wrote the anonymously published op-ed column that talks about White House efforts to protect the nation against the president of the United States, Donald Trump.

O’Donnell thinks it’s Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who’s in his 70s and is occupying the final public service job in his career.

The more I think about it the more plausible O’Donnell’s guess appears to be.

Then I went back to the essay and found this passage: … United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior.

I zeroed in on a pair of terms: malign behavior.

I have heard that phrase used exactly once in my life. It was stated recently to discuss the Russian involvement in attacking our electoral system.

It came from, yep, DNI Dan Coats.

Coincidence that it appeared in this NY Times commentary? I think not. Read the essay here.

national news

25th Amendment: closer to being invoked?

If you thought a presidential impeachment made our stomachs churn while it was in progress, consider what reportedly has been discussed within the walls of the White House.

According to the anonymous op-ed published today in The New York Times, senior White House officials have discussed openly the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That’s the one that enables the “temporary” removal of the president who a majority of Cabinet members believe is unfit to carry out the duties of his office.

As the film director and political activist Rob Reiner noted via Twitter: Now we have it. From inside the Trump WH. Conservative Republican WH officials considered invoking 25th Amendment to remove the President from office. We’re a huge step closer to seeing this national nightmare come to an end. GOP electeds, handwriting is on the wall.

I’m not going to endorse the notion that we’re a “huge step” closer to seeing the amendment activated. Having endured a presidential impeachment, though, the idea of seeking to wrest the power away from this president gives me the serious heebie-jeebies.

The amendment was ratified in the 1967 after being proposed in 1965. It was drafted in reaction to the assassination of President Kennedy. It spells out the appointment of a vice president … as well as the removal of the current president.

The amendment sets a high bar for enactment. Most Cabinet members have to agree; so must two-thirds of both congressional chambers.

However, to think that a senior administration official has said out loud that others of his or her colleagues have discussed this option openly is a profoundly chilling notion.

It’s not that I would oppose it. It’s that it would constitute a political act none of us has any experience witnessing unfold in real time.