Monthly Archives: October 2018

national news

She’s ‘credible’? Then she’s not? Which is it, Mr. POTUS?

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Donald John Trump keeps demonstrating his astonishing ability to contradict himself. What’s more, his “base” of followers keeps demonstrating its own remarkable talent for looking past this man’s hypocrisy.

The president as recently as a week ago said Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault is a “credible” accuser, someone who deserved a fair hearing of her grievance.

Then in a campaign rally in Mississippi just yesterday, the president decided to mock Ford and, yes, challenge her credibility.

He even sought to mimic the accuser’s voice, which came from someone who admitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that she was “terrified” to be testifying before the panel on national television.

Trump mocks Ford

I only can ask rhetorically, because the president has no clue as to how he might answer it were he to see the question: Which statement — credible or the mocking tone — reflects your actual point of view, Mr. President?

This individual, Donald Trump, is utterly, completely and categorically lacking in anything resembling a principled basis for the statements that pour out of his mouth.

However … he “tells it like it is.”

Disgraceful.

national news

How will this donnybrook finish?

Federal Judge Brett Kavanaugh insists he won’t withdraw his name from consideration to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then again, that’s what they all say … until they do what they say they won’t do.

Donald Trump’s nominee to the high court is facing serious accusations that he sexually assaulted a woman in 1982; two other women have leveled similar charges. The FBI is looking once again at Kavanaugh’s background.

Three U.S. senators — all Republicans — stand at the center of this political tumult. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine are officially “undecided” on how they will vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation. If two of them turn against Kavanaugh, it’s over, assuming that the Democratic Senate minority stands together in opposing Kavanaugh’s nomination.

If the FBI determines that Kavanaugh lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee about what he did back in the old days, well, that also is a deal breaker.

I cannot begin to predict it’ll happen, but I’ll just say I won’t be surprised if in the next 24 hours or so that Kavanaugh does what he says he will never do — and withdraws his name from consideration.

Hey, stranger things have happened.

Example? Donald Trump got elected president of the United States of America.

business news

What? Trump didn’t earn his fortune on his own?

The New York Times has reported something that many of us have suspected all along about Donald John Trump.

The man who would become president of the United States of America has long boasted about his business acumen, how he is a self-made zillionaire, how he is so damn smart.

Many of us out here have known that real business geniuses, real rich individuals, real smart men and women don’t brag openly about all of that.

The Times now reports that young Donald leaned heavily on his late father, Fred Trump, who gave his son lots and lots of money to bankroll his many business ventures.

Oh, and that Donald Trump well might have defrauded the U.S. government out of tax revenue through these questionable schemes.

What a revoltin’ development! I am just shocked, I tell ya, just shocked that Trump well might not be the self-made man he has boasted of being all these years.

Trump had all kinds of help

The Times is reporting that Trump received an estimated $413 million in “today’s dollars” to help build his business empire.

I guess it’s worth asking: Will any of this matter when — or if — the president seeks re-election in 2020? I’ll make a stab at answering it. Probably not, at least not to the base of supporters who continue to support the president.

Trump has bragged about getting a million bucks back when he began his business career. According to the NY Times, he got a lot more than that.

This guts of this story doesn’t really surprise me, although the detail in which the Times has reported it does reveal the amazing scope and depth to which the president sought to manipulate the system in his favor.

Yep, this is the guy who won an Electoral College victory in 2016 in his first-ever quest for any public office of any kind. It happened to be the presidency of the United States.

Gosh, I am so not proud of what we have gotten as a result.

entertainment news, local news, Sports news

MPEV occupant lines up a big-league affiliate

The San Diego Padres are coming back to Amarillo, Texas.

Amarillo’s upcoming minor-league baseball season has cleared yet another hurdle. The Padres used to be affiliated with an earlier Amarillo baseball franchise. They’re back in the fold with the new team that doesn’t yet have a name.

It is getting a ballpark, though. Bit by bit, the multipurpose event venue is going up along Buchanan Street. They hope to have the venue complete by April 2019, when the AA season commences in Amarillo.

Given the progress I’ve seen — albeit from some distance these days — I am no longer going to doubt the project will be done in time for the team to toss out the first pitch next spring.

The San Antonio Missions are moving to the Panhandle from South Texas; San Antonio will be home to a new AAA franchise that is relocating from Colorado Springs, Colo.

The next big question now appears to be: What are they going to call this new Amarillo baseball team?

I’ve done a 180 on this one. I once hated the Sod Poodles name that showed up on the list of finalist names being considered by the Elmore Group, owners of the new Amarillo team.

I am not entirely crazy about the name today, but the thought of the name has grown on me. I now officially hope that Sod Poodles, or some derivation of the name, becomes the name of the new team that will take the field.

But … the city that is remaking its downtown district — with new hotels, entertainment venues and a serious dressing up of street corners — has a new major league baseball affiliation about which it can boast.

Not bad.

legal news

This is how you define ‘comprehensive’?

Let’s see how this plays out.

Donald J. Trump said he wants the FBI to conduct a “comprehensive” investigation into Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford and the allegation of sexual assault that Ford has leveled against Kavanaugh.

That’s good … so far.

Then we hear that the FBI isn’t going to talk to either of them. Kavanaugh, the president’s nominee to join the U.S. Supreme Court won’t be interviewed by the FBI. Ford gets a pass, too.

My question, then, is this: How “comprehensive” can an FBI investigation be when the agency doesn’t interview the two main principals in this on-going political drama?

Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell might cast a full vote on Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the high court as early as Friday.

It appears that those of us who want a thorough and “comprehensive” probe are getting the bum’s rush.

national news

McConnell needs some self-awareness counseling

Ay, caramba!

What in the world is with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, griping about Senate Democrats who want to delay by one week the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court?

He bitched from the Senate floor about the “obstruction” of Democrats seeking an FBI probe to examine the veracity of sexual assault charges brought by Christine Blasey Ford and two other women against Kavanaugh.

Doesn’t this man remember anything? Doesn’t he remember how he led a year-long obstruction of President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court? Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016; his body wasn’t barely cold when McConnell said Obama would be denied the opportunity to replace him with a nominee.

The president nominated Merrick Garland. McConnell then said Garland wouldn’t even get a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. McConnell denied Obama the opportunity to fulfill his constitutional responsibility, which is to fill vacancies on the federal bench.

He said the president should carry out that task during an election year.

Baloney, man!

So now the majority leader is yapping because Democrats insist on an FBI probe into whether the newest high court nominee is fit to serve? Give me a break.

How about some self-awareness, Mr. Majority Leader?

media news

West Texas journalism takes a jaw-dropping plunge

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I am just now picking my jaw off the floor.

A friend of mine has just informed me of something that GateHouse Media, the new owners of the Amarillo Globe-News and the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, have done. It has posted a job opening for a “regional associate editor” who will be in charge of the opinion pages of both newspapers.

Ponder that for a moment.

The G-N and the A-J already have a “regional” publisher and a “regional” executive editor. The publisher resides in Lubbock; the exec editor lives in Amarillo. They spend time in the “other” city, I guess to make sure they’re “in touch” with them.

Now we have this idiotic notion of hiring someone who will serve as a regional “director of commentary.”

GateHouse purchased the papers from Morris Communications while promising to maintain a local journalistic presence, committing itself to local news.

What absolute and utter crap!

This latest decision by GateHouse tells me something quite different. GateHouse is trying to run the papers on the cheap. Why hire two people for these executive posts when they get can away with hiring one individual to cover both of them?

Oh, but what’s the cost? It’s plenty! I’ll speak to the commentary that both papers will deliver to these respective communities.

GateHouse seems to presume that Amarillo and Lubbock are identical. That they have identical needs and concerns. That their local issues mirror each other.

Good grief! They do not! How in the world does a regional director of commentary acquaint himself or herself fully with each community by having to split the time between them? He or she cannot do the impossible! GateHouse, though, is asking whoever they hire to do precisely that.

I worked as editorial page editor of the Globe-News for nearly 18 years. It was all I could do to stay current with issues involving Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle. To ask the new person to develop cogent editorial policy for two disparate communities 120 miles apart is a prescription for the destruction of both communities’ editorial voice.

In the old days, that voice was a critical component of daily journalism’s relevance to the needs of a community.

I believe I am hearing the death knell of daily journalism as we’ve known it in a part of the state I grew to love.

entertainment news

Has ‘SNL’ gone too far? Not … in … the … least!

So now some of the chatter out there focuses a bit on “Saturday Night Live” and its treatment of Donald J. Trump and Republican Party.

Has “SNL” gone too far? Hah! The question makes me laugh out loud. It hasn’t in the least gone “too far” in spoofing the president.

I mean, good grief! The show debuted in 1975 when Gerald Ford was president of the United States. Chevy Chase portrayed the president as a stumble-bum, based on the one time President Ford slipped and fell while coming down the stairs of Air Force One.

Dan Aykroyd once portrayed President Carter as an expert on illicit drugs. The late Phil Hartman used to poke fun at President Clinton’s gluttonous fast-food habits; Hartman’s send-ups about President Reagan also were hilarious. Then we had Dana Carvey cracking wise about President Bush 41’s occasional rhetorical non-sequiturs. Will Ferrell made “strategery” a national punch line with his spoofing of President Bush 43. And, of course, Fred Armisen’s Barack Obama made all of us howl.

Donald Trump needs to get over himself. He won’t, of course. The man is fixated on his own image and the idiotic notion that he must be portrayed as something he isn’t, which is an erudite, sophisticated, nuanced politician. He is none of that, as Alec Baldwin’s caricature reveals.

I’ll admit that “SNL” doesn’t hit it out of the park with every sketch. Then again, it has whiffed on several of its previous presidential sketches.

Lighten up, Mr. President. Tell those who comprise your political “base” to settle down, too. It’s all in fun, man!

education news

Get out and vote, you young people!

Rosemary Curts has pitched a positively capital idea dealing with increasing voter participation among young Americans.

Put early voting locations in our schools, writes the Dallas Independent School District math teacher in an op-ed written for the Dallas Morning News.

I am slapping myself on the side of my noggin over that one. Why didn’t I think of it?

Curts is one of four essayists whose ideas were published in the Sunday Morning News. I want to focus on her commentary because it makes so damn much sense.

She writes that government “must make it less of an ordeal to vote. In my experience, students are willing to vote — as long as they don’t have to go too far out of their way.”

Her idea is to install early voting stations in high schools. Hey, 18-year-old citizens can vote; many of them are still in high school. According to Curts, “Government classes could take a class trip downstairs to the polls, and because early voting stretches over days, students who forgot their voter identification cads one day could simply come back the next day.”

Dang, man! This is a good idea!

We have heard a lot of talk in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School about high school students being “energized” to get out the voter among their peers. They want to make a difference. Some of those students at Douglas High have become media stars, making public appearances around the country.

I am not yet certain their outrage over the deaths of their classmates this past Valentine’s Day is going to manifest itself in a surge of voter turnout among young Americans, who traditionally vote in puny numbers compared to their elders. These kids’ grandparents came of age in the 1960s and 1970s when they were rallying against an unpopular war in Vietnam and against government shenanigans relating to that scandal called “Watergate.”

I want to salute Rosemary Curts for putting forward an outstanding idea to make voting just a bit easier for today’s young people … not that it’s all that hard in the first place.

Still, whatever works.

State news

Abbott vs. Valdez: Texas campaign snoozer

Oh, man. With all the hype and hoopla being delivered on the race for Texas’s U.S. Senate seat now occupied by Ted Cruz, I was hoping the state’s race for governor might generate some energy, too, among voters.

Silly me. The race between Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Lupe Valdez has been an all-American snoozer.

The Cruz Missile is in the fight of his political life against Democrat Beto O’Rourke. I remain hopeful — but not entirely confident — that O’Rourke will defeat Cruz in this year’s election.

Abbott, though, is looking like a shoo-in against Valdez, the former Dallas County sheriff. In at least a couple of aspects, though, Valdez has made Texas political history already.

She is the first Latina in Texas history to be nominated for governor; she also is the first openly gay candidate to run for the state’s highest office. Neither aspect, though, has become an issue in this contest.

It’s not that I think Abbott has been a terrible governor. It’s just that I was hoping Valdez would have made it more of a race. Polling data I’ve seen suggest that Abbott will win handily, maybe by 20-plus percentage points.

Abbott and Valdez have engaged in their only political debate. It didn’t change anyone’s minds. Or, as they say, it didn’t “move the needle.”

Oh well. Maybe in 2022 we can get a truly competitive race for governor. I was hoping we’d have one this time.