Monthly Archives: October 2018

local news

Happy Trails, Part 127: Just wait, it’ll get here soon enough

I guess I can count as many non-retirees among my friends as those who’ve called it a career and are retirees … just like my wife and me.

I talked today in Amarillo with one of my non-retired friends. She was asking me how I “liked retirement.” She wondered if we were doing a “lot of traveling.” She added, “It must be nice, being retired.”

Well, yes it is. Then I reminded her of two things: First, she is a long way from retirement; second, it’ll get here before she knows it.

“I hope so,” she said, acknowledging that retirement today seems like a distant vision, adding immediately afterward that “I do still like working, though.” I’m glad to hear that, because she is good at what she does.

However, I have told many working men and women the same thing. The time will arrive; you’ll at yourself in the mirror and you’ll decide it’s time to call it all good. It’s time to retire. Then you’ll sit back for a moment or two — maybe three — and then wonder: When did I get so old? How did it happen so quickly? Where in the world did the time go?

Yep. That’s how it happens. It sneaks up on you. None of us realizes it in real time, but when the time arrives to retire, you almost always wonder the same thing about how it all slipped away so quickly.

We all can tell each other to prepare for retirement, do what we can to ensure financial security. Get all your affairs in order.

You’ll just have to take my word for it, that time has this way of speeding by when we least expect it. We might wish for it to do so in real time.

My mother always told me, though, about the hazards of “wishing your life away.” Don’t wish for retirement to arrive. It’ll get here in no time … none at all.

economic news

Doesn’t the deficit matter any longer?

News that the federal budget deficit grew by 17 percent in the past fiscal year makes me wonder.

How is it that “real Republicans” continue to lend their support to a man who calls himself a Republican but on whose watch the deficit is allowed to grow at this breakneck pace?

Donald Trump made a lot of campaign promises while winning the presidency. He said the deficit would plummet. It hasn’t.

It grew to about $771 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

Now I get that there are factors contributing to that deficit. The Trump tax cuts, for one. Another has been a boost in defense spending.

But juxtaposed to this deficit lies a curious set of potential issues that could send it into deep space. The wall Trump wants to build along our southern border is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Then there is that infrastructure improvement package that the president said should cost more than $1 trillion. He wants to improve, repair, renovate, rebuild our nation’s highways, bridges and airports.

Where in the name of fiscal responsibility is he going to get that money? Oh, I know! He’ll borrow it, just like President Barack Obama did in 2009 when he inherited a national economy in collapse — and which Trump and other Republicans criticized to the hilt at the time, even as the economy began to revive itself.

Obama and his spendthrift policies did help reduce the rate of growth in the annual deficit dramatically during his two terms in office. In President Bush’s final year, the deficit exceeded $1 trillion; the Obama administration and Congress managed to cut that annual amount by roughly two-thirds.

Now it’s climbing — inexorably, according to many economists — back toward that trillion-dollar figure.

Deficit hawks — and I consider myself a deficit hawk — are alarmed. If not, they should be alarmed.

Yet the question remains about those real Republicans. The president you embrace doesn’t adhere to anything approaching regular Republican fiscal orthodoxy. Why do you keep clinging to this individual’s coattail?

national news

What if POTUS is impeached and convicted?

It’s true. I deal with hypotheticals on occasion. I churn ideas around in my noggin, wondering what might happen if certain events were to transpire.

Let’s talk briefly about a potential presidential impeachment.

First of all, I don’t really want to see Donald Trump impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives. Believe me or disbelieve me if you wish. That’s just how I feel.

But if it were to happen sometime in 2019 with a new Democratic majority running the House, it’s good to wonder what happens at the end.

Presidential impeachment is stressful to the max … for the government and for partisans on both or all sides of a political dispute. It’s a huge deal, man! It’s happened just twice: Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 and Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998. They both were acquitted, although President Johnson escaped conviction by a single Senate vote. President Nixon quit in 1974 when the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment, assuring the full House would follow suit.

Donald Trump is facing the prospect — I won’t judge its probability — of impeachment but only if Democrats win control of the House after next month’s midterm election. Democrats need a simple majority in the House to impeach a president.

Then we have the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, who appears to be winding it down.

Suppose, then, Mueller presents evidence of, say, collusion with Russians who attacked our 2016 election. Suppose, too, he finds evidence of obstruction of justice based on Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey. Finally, let’s suppose Mueller produces evidence that the president violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which says presidents cannot take gifts from foreign governments.

OK, so the House impeaches the president. Then it goes to the Senate, where there will be a trial presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts. Congressional Republicans so far have been standing by their guy, Trump. If Democrats take control of the Senate, it likely will be by a tiny margin … maybe a seat or two. That’s not enough to convict a president; conviction requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

But wait! What if the evidence is so compelling, so overwhelming that enough Republicans cross over to side with Democrats? And what if the president is convicted and tossed out of office? Vice President Pence takes over.

Here is where I am going with this.

Should the House and Senate then ensure that Trump’s presidency is not recognized? There might be a move to obliterate any evidence that Donald Trump served as 45th president. It cannot happen? Sure it can. Such a thing has happened in at least one statehouse: in my home state of Oregon.

The image of a former governor, Democrat Neil Goldschmidt, has been removed from the state capitol building in Salem. He was a successful governor and then a transportation secretary in the Carter administration. Then he admitted just a few years ago — after a newspaper investigation — that when he was mayor of Portland, he had sexual affair with an underage girl. Goldschmidt then vanished from public view, never to be seen again.

They took his portrait down in the state capitol rotunda, as if Goldschmidt never existed.

Does the same fate befall Donald Trump in the event he is convicted? I think it should, just as I am glad they removed Neil Goldschmidt from any recognition in my home state.

Do I want any of this to happen? No. I do not. I merely want the truth to be revealed about what the president knew, when he knew it.

I would actually settle for an apology. It would provide enough pain to the president to satisfy me. He’s never apologized for anything  in his life … ever! Right?

national news

Gen. Lee and Gen. Washington equal? Nope

I received a scolding today from someone I respect very much. We’re connected on social media; he read a blog item I published and then reminded me of something I feel the need to challenge — respectfully, of course.

My blog item mentioned that Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was a traitor to the United States when he led soldiers into battle against forces fighting to preserve the Union.

My friend then responded by telling me that Gen. George Washington also committed an act of treason by rebelling against England in the 18th century. Gen. Washington led his army against the soldiers fighting for The Crown. Had the colonists lost the American Revolution, he said, they would have been hanged.

This argument comes forward every now and then by those who seek to defend Gen. Lee against those — such as me — who contend that he committed treason by siding with the Confederates in their effort to split the country apart.

I am not going to put words into my friend’s mouth, but surely he doesn’t equate the two acts of rebellion.

Had the revolution failed, we well might be speaking with British accents and paying exorbitant taxes without having any say in how much we should pay.

And if the Confederates had won the Civil War, they would have created a nation that allowed for the continued enslavement of human beings.

There really isn’t a scintilla of moral equivalence, in my eyes at least, between the struggles. The revolution produced a nation built on the concept of freedom and liberty for all; the Declaration of Independence delivers out a long list of grievances that the founders sought to be eliminated. The Civil War erupted because some states wanted the authority to determine whether they could keep human beings in bondage.

I’m not sure what my friend is suggesting. Surely he doesn’t intend to equate one with the other.

I need to stipulate, too, that had the founders failed to create a nation after the revolution, there might have been scant reason for immigrants to travel across the ocean to the Land of Opportunity. My grandparents would have stayed in Greece and Turkey. My parents wouldn’t have met. I wouldn’t have been born.

Many millions of Americans had skin in that revolutionary game.

Therefore, I’m glad the founding fathers rebelled against the king.

religious news

Evangelical support of POTUS remains a mystery

I am shaking my head. Hard. I cannot believe how this particular president has managed to do the seemingly impossible: retain the support of the nation’s Christian evangelical movement.

I’ll start this rant, though, with a word of praise for Donald Trump. I am thrilled that he and his administration were able to obtain the release of an American pastor held captive in Turkey for the past two years. Andrew Brunson is a free man and the president insists the United States gave away nothing — not a thing — to secure his release from the Turks.

Leaders praise Trump

Brunson went to the White House to thank the president. The men prayed in the Oval Office. I am delighted he is home, a free man once again. Congratulations belong to the president and his team.

***

But then comes the strange endorsement of Trump from religious leaders who continue to sing the man’s praises, even though they know of his myriad indiscretions, his serial philandering, his abuse of women, his hideous public rhetoric about how he has never sought forgiveness for his sins.

Televangelist and Trump adviser James Robison said this: “He wouldn’t be our Sunday school teacher necessarily but he’s doing a great job of leadership.  I love him so much I can hardly explain it.”

Necessarily, Rev. Robison? Do ya think?

How in the name of all that is holy did this president pull this off? Sure, he has made some policy pronouncements that have stoked joy in the hearts of evangelicals. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; he sought to ban transgender Americans from serving in the military; Trump has been able to seat two conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.

I just cannot get past the man’s lengthy history of decadence and behavior that used to send chills up the spines of the most faithful among us. No longer, or so it seems.

Evangelicals are willing to give him a pass because he is so effective at pandering to their wishes.

Baffling. In the extreme!

local news, political news

Sagan gets a (sort of) endorsement

My old buddy Greg Sagan is trying to do the nearly impossible: defeat longtime incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry in this year’s midterm election.

Sagan has gotten some help from a most unlikely source. The question now though is this: What good will it do? I have an answer: Hardly none.

Still, the Houston Chronicle, which sits way down yonder on the Texas Gulf Coast, has urged readers of the paper to vote against Thornberry, who’s running for re-election in the 13th Congressional District, stretching from the Texas Panhandle to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

The Chronicle said “voters from Amarillo to Wichita Falls” should endorse the Democrat Sagan or the Libertarian Calvin DeWeese. The paper referred to the challengers as “two politicians who didn’t kick us while we were under 50-plus inches of floodwater.”

The Chron is angry that Thornberry was one of four Texas Republican congressmen to oppose aid to the Houston area in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. You remember Hurricane Harvey, yes? It dumped all that rain a year ago along the Gulf Coast from Houston to the Golden Triangle.

Three of the four naysayers aren’t seeking re-election. Thornberry is the last man standing. He has drawn the ire of the Houston Chronicle. One of the GOP lawmakers who said “no” to Harvey funds is Sam Johnson of Plano, who happens to be my congressman now that my wife and I have moved to the Metroplex.

The task for Sagan now is spreading the word among Texas Panhandle voters about the seeming heartlessness of a native Texan who just couldn’t support legislation aimed at helping fellow Texans in maximum distress.

I am pulling for my pal, Greg Sagan.

military news

Hoping that Mattis stays put

This news is distressing in the extreme.

The one individual serving in the Donald J. Trump administration that I want to stay might be calling it a day. Defense Secretary James Mattis reportedly, allegedly, supposedly is on the bubble.

He might bail from the administration. It has been reported that the defense boss is unhappy with the commander in chief. Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear,” attributes some unkind remarks from the retired Marine Corps general about the president.

He has opposed Trump’s policy pronouncements, such as the one that bans transgender troops from serving in the military. Mattis also believes the U.S. pullout from the Paris climate accord is a mistake. And, as Woodward reported in “Fear,” Mattis had to explain to the president that the presence of 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea is intended to “prevent World War III.”

I will refrain from attaching the “Mad Dog” nickname to Mattis; he reportedly hates the term, so I won’t use it other than to refer to it.

Mattis is a grownup. He is a tested combat veteran who knows full well the consequences of war.

He is mature. He is reasonable. He is measured.

Mattis is precisely the kind of presence that Donald Trump needs close to him in times of crisis.

And, so what if James Mattis is “sort of a Democrat,” as Trump has said? Defense policy should be far removed from partisan politics.

local news, political news, State news

Entering crucial stage of midterm campaign

I’ve seen this kind of thing happen before. A “wave election” occurs when the least likely incumbent takes a fall, signaling a dramatic change in fortunes for the halls of Congress.

In 1994, I had a ringside seat for one of those events. Longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Jack Brooks of Beaumont represented one of Texas’s last Democratic bastions in the Golden Triangle. He’d been in Congress for more than four decades. His foe that year was a guy who came out of nowhere.

Steve Stockman shocked the political world by beating the late “Sweet Ol’ Brooks” to take his House seat as part of the Contract With America GOP delegation.

I figured at the time if Brooks was to lose, the entire House was going to flip. Sure enough. He did. The House did flip.

Stockman lasted one term before being defeated for re-election in 1996. He was elected again much later, but then lost again after another single term. He’s now facing prison time for fraud.

Fast-forward to the present day. Texas’s U.S. Senate seat is in play. Democrat Beto O’Rourke is trying to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in a state that is as Republican as it gets.

The way I figure it today, if somehow O’Rourke manages to pull off what looks like the Upset of the Ages, then the U.S. Senate stands a good chance of flipping from Republican to Democratic control.

It’s a steep hill for the El Paso congressman. He trails the Cruz Missile. But not by much. I see polls that swing from 2 points to 8 points. Cruz should — by standard political measures — be way up. He’s not.

O’Rourke well might lose on Nov. 6. I don’t want him or his allies to claim some sort of “moral victory” by making it close. A loss is a loss. For my money, Cruz needs to lose. He might represent a lot of Texans’ values. He doesn’t represent mine.

If the Cruz Missile gets blown out of the sky, then I am betting that the entire Senate turns over.

Believe me, stranger things have happened — just as it did in the Golden Triangle all those years ago.

national news

Keep it civil, Hillary

I have been on a mission quest for more political civility. It won’t end any time soon. I now want to issue some advice to a woman who should have won the 2016 presidential election, but who got the surprise of her political life.

Hillary Rodham Clinton needs an attitude check.

Clinton has told interviewers the time for civil public debate will occur when and if Democrats win control of Congress after next month’s midterm election. Until then? All bets are off, she says.

Republicans only understand “strength,” she said. She said Democrats cannot deal with a political party that won’t adhere to a code of civil discourse and debate.

The only option, according to the World of Hillary, is to take the fight straight to the GOP. Hit them as hard as they hit you, she said.

C’mon, Mme. Secretary/former senator/former first lady! 

That kind of attitude only begets more anger. It is unbecoming of someone who had my vote in 2016. Just for the record, I don’t regret for one second — or an instant! — casting my presidential vote for Hillary Clinton.

My hope is that we can return sooner rather than later to a time when Democrats and Republicans can work together, rather than at cross purposes. I want a return to an era when Republican lawmakers, such as the late Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois, locked arms with Democratic presidents, such as the late Lyndon Johnson. Or when Democratic lawmakers, such as the late Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, did the same with Republican presidents, such as George W. Bush.

Dirksen and Johnson helped forge the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts; Kennedy and Bush helped formulate sweeping education reform.

These days, the two sides lob grenades at each other from a distance. That is not in the interest of good government.

I remain a bit of an idealist on this, but I believe one of the political parties can set the example for the other one to follow. If Hillary is right, that the GOP only understands “strength,” the remedy could be to show the other side an ability and willingness to bridge the great divide.

State news

Don’t go low … as the other guys do

I’m going to stand with Beto O’Rourke and his belief that civility should return to our public discourse.

Speaking to the Dallas Morning News editorial board, O’Rourke – the Democratic candidate for U.S. senator – said he disagrees with former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s belief that “when they go low, we kick them.” That’s not who O’Rourke is, he told the DMN.

I recently chided a Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania for declaring his intention to “stomp all over” the Democratic governor’s face with “golf spikes.” Scott Wagner said he was peaking metaphorically against Gov. Tom Wolf. Still, the language is harsh, crude and unacceptable. Wagner later apologized for using such harsh rhetoric.

Holder’s comments about “kicking” the folks on the other side also are unacceptable, although not as graphic as the bellowing assertion that Wagner made.

As for O’Rourke, he is showing remarkable restraint as he campaigns against Sen. Ted Cruz in this year’s Senate race midterm election. I want to applaud him for seeking to remain true to his belief that civility is better for the cause of public discourse – and for the nation – than the angry rhetoric that we’ve been hearing.

I still think former first lady Michelle Obama’s advice is the best: When they go low, we go high.