Monthly Archives: September 2018

national news

Fist pumps? Really, to commemorate 9/11 tragedy?

I’ve noted this before, but it came back in a big way this week as Donald J. Trump sought to commemorate the worst attack on U.S. soil in our nation’s history.

The president and first lady Melania Trump flew to Shanksville, Pa., to honor the memory of the airline passengers who battled the terrorists who hijacked the jetliners and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. United Flight 93 passengers fought the terrorists and crashed the plane in a field, saving possibly hundreds more lives.

It’s a tragic event. It is worthy of somber, quiet and dignified commemoration. The president’s arrival? It featured fist pumps and outward behavior that reminded observers of a political rally.

Hmm. I don’t quite know how to react to all of that.

Fist pumps at this event?

It’s been commented on since he became president that Donald Trump seems to lack the gene that compels presidents to serve as pastor in chief, comforter in chief. Trump doesn’t have it. He doesn’t rise to the occasion. His first and final instinct is to treat these kinds of events as political rallies.

Yes, he spoke seriously and somberly about the heroism exhibited on 9/11 aboard United Flight 93.

However, that was a moment in time. The event should have been treated the way one would expect a president to treat it: with solemnity and sadness.

It just makes me wonder whether this man, the president, is capable of comforting a nation in mourning.

State news

Democrats looking for an actual victory in Texas

A “moral victory” in Texas won’t be good enough for Democrats who now are officially licking their chops at the prospect of knocking off a first-term Republican U.S. senator.

Beto O’Rourke is challenging Ted Cruz. The fact that Texas’s U.S. Senate seat is part of the national discussion on the eve of the midterm election is stunning enough all by itself.

However, O’Rourke and his supporters aren’t likely to settle for coming close to Cruz. They think now they have a chance to actually knock the Cruz Missile off his launch pad.

Poll after public opinion poll is saying essentially the same thing: O’Rourke has closed the gap to a dead heat, enabling the challenger to chip away at what was supposed to be an insurmountable lead in this most Republican of states.

Republicans believe the race is still Cruz’s to lose. I’m not sure about that. I cannot predict that O’Rourke will win. I am reading the same polls that others are reading. I am not involved in the campaign. I don’t know what the O’Rourke troops are doing in the field.

I’m just astonished that O’Rourke is continuing the strategy he has employed since the beginning of the fall campaign: He is traveling to rural counties, talking to voters one on one. He continues to visit counties where Cruz figures to do well. He is taking the fight straight to the incumbent.

As for Cruz, he has gone negative. O’Rourke hasn’t yet gone there. I don’t yet know what his plans are as Election Day draws near. Hey, I’m just a spectator out here, watching this race unfold right along with the rest of the state.

My gut tells me that a “moral victory” won’t be enough. If, after all this campaigning has ended, and Beto O’Rourke falls short of Ted Cruz’s vote total — even if it’s by just a handful of ballots — I fully expect there to be profound disappointment.

“Wait’ll next time” won’t be good enough to assuage the wounds.

O’Rourke wants it. Bigly.

legal news

Federal judiciary: more political than ever?

I have long supported the principle of an “independent” federal judiciary, whose members are given jobs for life if they choose to stay at their post for as long as they draw breath.

The nation’s founders established it all at the beginning, giving the president the power to select these individuals and the U.S. Senate to confirm them.

My thoughts — naive though they were — believed that such independence would insulate judges from political pressure.

Oh, man! I was as wrong as I could be.

Brett Kavanaugh has provided us just yet another example of how mistaken I have been. Donald J. Trump selected him to succeed Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court. The president has made his judicial preferences clear: He intends to nominate judges who will toss out Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion.

Thus, the political wind has swirled all over Judge Kavanaugh. He has said something about Roe being “settled law,” which gave pro-choice advocates some hope that he would leave the ruling alone were he to have to decide a case down the road.

Others aren’t so sure.

Presidential elections surely have consequences. Trump won the 2016 election and already has won the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the nation’s highest court. Kavanaugh is set to join the court.

Is he free of political pressure? No. He isn’t. Not by a long shot. Indeed, all federal judges — from trial bench judges, to all level of appellate court judges — face political pressure. It doesn’t let up after they take their seats on the bench. Yes, it gathers incredible steam as they seek confirmation.

I won’t back down from my strong belief in presidential appointment of federal judges. Their lifetime jobs give them some semblance of independence from run-of-the-mill political pressure.

Sadly, it doesn’t eliminate it.

media news

Communities still need newspapers of record

A friend and former colleague posted this picture on social media, noting that the building appears to be “crying.”

It sits at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Harrison Street in downtown Amarillo, Texas. It currently houses what is left of the Amarillo Globe-News, where my friend worked for more than 20 years and where I worked for nearly 18 years.

It symbolizes a once-proud community institution. The Globe-News once stood tall as a pillar of the community it served with distinction and pride. Indeed, back in the good old days, the evening edition of the Globe-News — the Globe-Times — earned print journalism’s highest honor: the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service.

The editor of the Globe-Times, Tommy Thompson, uncovered corruption in county government. He and his staff hammered at the issue. Their hard work brought about reforms and needed change. The Pulitzer board recognized that effort by bestowing the paper with its highest honor.

That was in 1960. It seems as though it happened even longer ago than that.

Print journalism is undergoing enormous change at this moment in history. Amarillo is enduring some serious pain and suffering. It now functions with a staff that is a fraction of its historic size. The corporate ownership changed in 2017. Morris Communications, which owned the paper since 1972, sold to GateHouse Media. Morris is no longer publishing daily newspapers. GateHouse’s goals for the G-N and for the Lubbock Avalance-Journal, which it purchased, are not entirely clear.

Amarillo no longer has a newspaper that stands tall as the publication of record. Neither does Lubbock. The G-N closed its printing presses a couple of years ago; it now prints its editions in Lubbock.

The papers now are being led by “regional” executives: a publisher who resides in Lubbock but spends part of his week in Amarillo; and an executive editor who lives in Amarillo but spends part of her week in Lubbock.

Two men with a combined 60-plus years of experience in Amarillo have left the business. The newspaper is going to feel their absence in ways they cannot yet measure or define. Take my word for it, the paper’s mission will suffer.

I regret to note, further, that none of this is unique to the Texas Panhandle or the South Plains. My most recent experience in print journalism, though, involves Amarillo, a community my wife and I grew to love when we moved there in 1995. My newspaper career delivered many more good times and enjoyment during the years I spent at the Globe-News.

Then a lot of things changed.

Now I am watching from some distance as the newspaper that drew many craftsmen and women together and delivered many shared experiences struggles to find a new identity.

I am having serious doubt that the Globe-News will find it.

environmental news

Storm response might reveal truth about Maria

1 Comment

Donald J. Trump, as is his habit, told a serious lie when looking back on the administration’s response to Hurricane Maria’s devastating attack on Puerto Rico.

He called it an “unsung success,” which it wasn’t. It was a disastrous display of incompetence.

So … now the administration is preparing for another monstrous storm. Hurricane Florence is bearing down on the Carolina coast. Federal emergency management officials have ordered evacuations along Atlantic coasts of North and South Carolina.

The president said this week that “we’re ready” for the storm to make landfall. It will land likely as a Category 4 monster, packing winds of 150 mph, producing storm surges exceeding a dozen feet and bringing as much as 2 feet of rainfall.

We’re about to see just how well the government can respond to Mother Nature’s wrath. In a curious sense, we’ll also get to compare this response to what the president described as a glowing success a year ago when Hurricane Maria killed nearly 3,000 Americans in Puerto Rico.

I damn sure want the government to deliver on its promise of being “ready” for this storm, even if its response to Hurricane Florence reveals where the feds fell short in the Caribbean.

The nation is hoping for the best.

Donald Trump

Hoping that ‘truth’ wins this war

1 Comment

Bob Woodward’s book “Fear” doesn’t plow a lot of new ground regarding Donald J. Trump’s slipshod administration.

Still, to hear a renowned print journalist declare there to be a “war against truth” within the administration has a way of getting one’s attention.

“Fear” has been published. I’m awaiting my copy via Amazon in a few days. Woodward has been making the talk-show circuit, telling interviewers that the president is waging a “war against truth.”

It is the 19th book Woodward has written. He has covered nine presidents of the United States, dating back to the Nixon administration. All the presidents from Richard Nixon forward — Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — have felt the sting of Woodward’s penchant for reporting the truth.

The current president has taken an entirely different tack when pushing back against Woodward. He calls the jounalist’s work “fiction” and has launched a campaign to discredit a man known for meticulous reporting techniques. He produces multiple sources and stands squarely behind his reporting.

Time to ‘wake up’

I continue to believe the reporter more than I believe the president, a man known as a serial liar who appears genetically wired to prevaricate … even when the truth stands in the way.

Woodward said his former boss at the Washington Post, the late Ben Bradlee, used to live by the credo that “the truth will emerge” no matter what.

I’ll maintain the faith that the truth will emerge even as the president seeks to deny its existence.

State news

Yes, they were ‘heroes’ at The Alamo

What’s going on with the Texas State Board of Education?

The 15-member elected board had decided that the men who fought and died at The Alamo shouldn’t be called “heroic” in Texas textbooks that tells the story of the 1836 struggle.

Then the SBOE backed off. The men who died were heroes after all. Politicians from Gov. Greg Abbott on down had objected to the eliminating of the “heroic” description of the fight.

The Texas Tribune reported: The board has been streamlining curriculum standards for social studies for the past several months, with the aim of cutting back on the instructional time for teachers and allowing them to go into depth in their courses. The workgroup’s recommendations, submitted to the State Board of Education in April by a volunteer working group of area experts, called the term “value charged” and recommended its removal. They also struck out a reference to a letter Col. William B. Travis wrote just before the siege titled “To the People of Texas and All Americans in the World.”

I’m not a Texas native. My wife, sons and I got here as soon as we could. I grew up in Oregon and studied The Alamo battle back in the day, in junior high school and later in high school. By the time we moved to Texas in 1984 I was well aware of the “heroic” stature that the men had achieved when they fought against a huge military force of Mexican soldiers who laid siege to the mission.

C’mon, SBOE! Don’t mess with what we know to be true. Those men fought heroically. They died as heroes. Didn’t the Texians who took the fight to Mexico’s armed forces rally to the battle cry “Remember the Alamo”?

SBOE backs off

Part of the change seems to have something to do with the short shrift textbooks give to civil rights leaders. As the Tribune reports: Those in support of the workgroup’s initial proposal argued that using language like “heroic” for the defenders of the Alamo and minimizing the contribution of civil rights leaders whitewashes the history of Texas. “The curriculum standards that guide what we learn in our public school classrooms don’t teach enough and don’t teach the truth,” said Lamontria Edwards, a student at Paul Quinn College in Dallas.

Fair point. However, let’s be sure our texts also teach children of the heroism of our civil rights movement in addition to teaching them of the heroes who died at The Alamo.

economic news

Socialist? Why, I never …

1 Comment

I’ve been called out by a critic of High Plains Blogger.

Some fellow who I don’t know, but who reads my blog regularly, has called me a “socialist.” He likens me to U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer as a socialist in their ilk.

Hmm. I need to respond to this guy.

I’ll start with this: He doesn’t know what a socialist is. A socialist is someone who believes in, um, socialism. And what is that, precisely?

Socialism is an economic philosophy that emphasizes collective ownership of business and industry. Let’s see. Have I ever advocated taking over business and industry by the government? Have I ever said that private ownership is bad for the country? No. I haven’t.

To that end, I am as much of a capitalist as this fellow who purports to know — beyond a shadow of a doubt — that I am a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool socialist.

I tend to avoid getting involved in these tit-for-tat responses on social media. For starters, many of High Plains Blogger’s critics tend to suffer from last word-itis. They have to get the last word on any exchange. So, I concede the last word to them. I’ll make whatever point I want to make, let ’em respond and then I move on.

As for the socialist rap, this individual hung that label on me after a blog post that didn’t discuss economic policy at all!

I believe, therefore, many of those who hang the “socialist” tag on folks such as yours truly are using the word as  cudgel to beat others up whenever they disagree with them on any policy at all.

To call someone a “socialist” is akin to saying “your mother wears combat boots.”

When in doubt, I rely on my tattered American Heritage dictionary, which describes socialism this way: “A social system in which the means of producing and distributing goods are owned collectively and political power is exercised by the whole community.”

Is that me? Umm. No. It isn’t. So there.

national news

Remembering 9/11 … with false praise

1 Comment

Donald J. Trump chose to remember 9/11 in a most curious — and shameful — manner.

Yes, he went to Shanksville, Pa., and delivered some moving remarks paying tribute to the passengers who fought the hijackers intent on crashing United 93 into the U.S. Capitol.

Then he returned to the Oval Office and boasted about how “great” the government performed a year ago when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. The response, he said, was the best in history.

Oh, but wait! The death toll in Puerto Rico has been, um, adjusted. Instead of 64 deaths, we now know that 2,975 Americans died from the wrath of the storm that ravaged the island territory.

It took a year to restore power. Food and water was painfully slow to arrive.

So, on the day supposedly dedicated to remembering the heroes and victims of 9/11, the president decided to lie — yet again — about the government’s response to a human tragedy in Puerto Rico.

Donald Trump’s penchant for self-aggrandizement continues to amaze many Americans. Sure, he has those who support him. They’ll cheer him on. Not me.

The president’s inability to set aside the false narrative about the government’s response to a tragic event demonstrates yet again the president’s ignorance about the complex nation he was elected to govern.

State news

‘Likability’ to determine who wins this race?

Who would have thought that the winner of the next big contest for the U.S. Senate seat from Texas would hinge on the candidates’ “likability”?

Democrat Beto O’Rourke is challenging Republican incumbent Ted Cruz in 2018. Cruz was supposed to win re-election in a walk. He represents Texas in the U.S. Senate, one of the nation’s most reliably Republican states.

Something happened, though, on Cruz’s re-election waltz. He ran into a guy who seems to be throwing conventional wisdom out the window. O’Rourke is conducting an essentially positive campaign to date, speaking in vague terms about ridding Washington of the hyper-negativity that borders on hostility.

Meanwhile, Cruz is firing off barbs criticizing O’Rourke over his occasional potty mouth as a younger man.

He is managing to make O’Rourke eminently more “likable.”

Cruz stormed into the Senate six years and made an immediate national name for himself. He became one of those rare freshman senators who could be seen on TV constantly, at times seemingly in several locations all at once. He seemed to defy the laws of physics by being everywhere at the same time. What drove Cruz? Personal ambition. Therein lies what I believe has been Ted Cruz’s primary reason for serving in the Senate.

He ran for president of the United States halfway through his first term in the Senate, which by itself isn’t all that unusual: Barack Obama did the same thing, too.

But Cruz comes off as harsh, self-centered and blinded by personal ambition. Indeed, Donald Trump may have spoken something approaching the truth when he said during the 2016 presidential campaign that “no one likes” Cruz in the Senate.

What was supposed to be a cakewalk to re-election for the GOP incumbent senator has turned into a journey fraught with peril.

It all might be decided on likability.