Monthly Archives: November 2018

national news

Vote recount = election theft? Hardly!

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Donald J. Trump is so adept at tossing out unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations it’s getting difficult to zero in on matters deserving of comment.

But here’s one that does. The president has tweeted an allegation of electoral theft in Florida — without any evidence, quite naturally — because officials there have ordered a recount of ballots in the races for U.S. senator and for governor.

Democrats and Republicans are locked in vise-tight battles for both offices. Trump now has warned of possible theft of the election moments after the recounts were declared.

Hey, he’s a pro at this kind of fear-mongering. Remember how he contended that “millions of illegal aliens” voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, accounting for her nearly 3 million vote lead in the popular vote?

America is still waiting for proof of that allegation, Mr. President.

He once warned of a “rigged election” were he to lose the 2016 presidential contest. Hah! He won that election, but hasn’t said a disparaging word about the allegation over whether Russian interference might have “rigged” the results in his favor.

How about letting the recount proceed, Mr. President. We don’t need to hear another word from you on whether there’s any “theft” involved. If the Republicans end up winning the Senate seat and the governorship, at least they will have ensured that all the ballots are counted. The same thing will hold true as well even if the Democrats emerge victorious.

That’s how the system works.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 129: Those stress wrinkles are gone!

I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my face in the mirror, but of late I have noticed something that’s missing from my homely mug.

It’s what I guess I should call “stress wrinkles.”

My late Aunt Verna used to tease me about a crease between my eyebrows that I never could seem to hide when I was working for a living. Other members of my family had noticed it, too. They rarely said anything. Aunt Verna, though, was unafraid to speak her mind.

I notice their absence when I get up in the morning and then through the day when I have occasion to wash my hands or splash water on my face.

Yep, work had this way of making me scrunch up my face as I stressed out over deadlines, or an irate reader of an editorial or a column I wrote for one of the newspapers where I worked.

I guess I brought it home with me at the end of a long and occasionally stressful day. My wife would notice that crease in my forehead. She might say something about my day or … she might just leave well enough alone.

That goofy stress wrinkle was the only tangible/visible result of the craft I pursued for 37 years. My blood pressure hasn’t risen terribly, unlike what has happened to friends of mine.

One dear friend of ours once worked for an organization in Amarillo, during which time she suffered from acute hypertension. She was so worried about the terrible spike in her blood pressure, she was prescribed some high-potency antidote for it.

Then she quit her job. The result? Her blood pressure returned to normal … immediately! Our friend ditched the high-powered meds and has lived happily ever after since.

When we have returned to Amarillo, one of the common greetings my wife and I hear is how “relaxed” we look, how “happy” we appear to be and how free we seem to be of the stress of working.

No kidding? Yep. Retirement is, shall we say, OK in my book.

You can see it in my face.

environmental news, national news

People suffer from wildfire horror and POTUS says … what?

Nine people have died. Thousands of acres of land have been destroyed. Hundreds of homes have gone up in flames.

And the president of the United States shoots out a Twitter message that says:

“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!

Donald John Trump has a heart of stone. Wouldn’t you agree? Don’t answer that. There’s no need.

Once again we see the president lashing out instead of reaching out. Americans are suffering grievous loss of property and, yes, lives.

Why is that? Might it be that — hmm — the victims live in California, one of those “coastal enclaves” that voted in 2016 for Hillary Clinton over Trump?

Scott McLean, a spokesman for Cal Fire — which handles forest management — said of the president’s tweet, “It’s disappointing that he says these things.”

It sounds as if McLean is pulling his punches a bit. It is far more than merely “disappointing.” Donald Trump’s demonstration of heartlessness is disgraceful.

However, it’s the kind of reaction we have grown accustomed to hearing from the president of the United States.

national news, political news

‘Florida’ becomes new synonym for election incompetence

Move over, Texas. You — I mean “we” — are being replaced as the butt of jokes related to election incompetence and possible corruption.

There once was a time when Texas was known for dead people casting ballots in, say, tiny Duval County in the southern part of the state. It was thought that the cadaver vote vaulted Lyndon Baines Johnson into Congress.

As a transplant who moved to Texas more than three decades ago, I am not proud of the state’s former reputation as a cesspool for political corruption. In that regard, I feel sorry for the conscientious Floridians who now are living with the same level of skepticism.

Broward County, Fla., is in the news again. It isn’t good.

Trouble looms for 2020

They’re trying to determine the winner of two red-hot races in Florida: the campaign for governor and for U.S. Senate. The attention focuses on Broward County, home to around 2 million residents. Thus, they cast a lot of votes in that south Florida county.

They can’t seem to get ’em counted. There might be an automatic recount. Or maybe it’ll be a manual recount.

Republican Gov. Rick Scott holds a narrow lead over U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson — at the moment! GOP U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis is barely ahead of Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. Scott and DeSantis have (more or less) declared victory. Nelson and Gillum aren’t conceding. They’re waiting … and waiting … and waiting for all the ballots to be counted.

Of course, this is far from the first time Florida has been at the epicenter of questionable electoral issues. You remember the 2000 presidential election, yes? It came down to an aborted recount of the contest between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Albert Gore Jr. The winner would rake in the state’s Electoral College votes and win the presidency. The U.S. Supreme Court ended up ordering the vote count stopped and when it did, Gov. Bush had 537 more votes — out of more than 5.8 million ballots cast — than Vice President Gore. The court ruling came on a 5-4 vote; the five GOP appointed justices voted to stop the count, with the four Democratic appointed justices dissenting.

Well, the rest — as they say — is history.

This resident of Texas is glad to have my state kicked off the (alleged) voter fraud pedestal.

As a patriotic American, though, I do hope that our fellow Americans in Florida can cure what ails that state’s electoral process. Our political process needs to be free of this kind of turmoil.

I just pray the Russians aren’t involved.

local news

More road work on the way

I guess I thought wrong.

I had hoped to have moved away from incessant street, road and highway construction when we relocated this past spring from Amarillo to Fairview.

Silly me.

The midterm election this week included a three-part bond issue for Collin County residents to consider. Two of the parts called for expenditure of several hundred millions of dollars to improve and build new streets and highways in the county. The third part seemed at first blush to be somewhat counterintuitive: It calls for parks and open spaces to deal with expected skyrocketing population growth in Collin County. Why might that be counterintuitive? Growth means more housing and need for housing space; not necessarily room for parks and open space.

Collin County voters approved all three measures … and by comfortable margins at that!

I won’t complain about the highway construction. We’ll just have to find ways to navigate around it once it commences.

I do want to comment briefly on the parks matter.

I am a big believer in parks and open spaces. Thus, I am glad that voters have seen fit to approve that part of the county’s ambience.

My wife and I have noticed already on our travels through Collin County an abundance of parkways. Many thoroughfares are beautifully landscaped with grassy medians and plenty of trees. Indeed, we live on a parkway that cuts through Fairview. We enjoy driving along it and enjoy walking along the parkway with Toby the Puppy.

I don’t yet know where the county will develop its new parks and where it will set aside the open space. Collin County already has no shortage of beautifully manicured parks. There will be more.

County officials’ intent is to make Collin County more attractive to future residents. Well, it worked on two new residents: that would be my wife and me.

The road work? We’ll just have to suck it up. Besides, we’re already used to it.

national news

Civility now appears farther away than ever

Those of us who lament the lack of civility in our public debate between elected officials are going to be disappointed when the next Congress takes its seat in January.

We’ll have a divided legislative branch: Democrats will control the House of Representatives; Republicans will run the Senate.

The White House, of course, remains in GOP control.

Donald Trump has called — ostensibly — for “peace and harmony.” He said he wants it. He has vowed to work toward it. His performance in the wake of the midterm election suggests he doesn’t mean what he said.

Democrats are gearing up for a subpoena blizzard. The new congressional committee chairs are threatening to summon White House officials left and right to Capitol Hill. They want to question them on, oh, damn near everything under the sun.

Donald Trump now is declaring that the election that produced a Democratic takeover of the House and narrowing of the GOP margin of the Senate is a product of electoral fraud. Sound familiar? Sure it does. It’s the president’s fall-back position when the balloting doesn’t go his way.

Democrats are sure to be angry. Republicans are certain to be defiant.

Donald Trump is a lead-pipe cinch to continue his habit of lying through his teeth.

Peace and harmony are nowhere to be found.

Count me as one American who is continuing to be disappointed in our federal government.

national news

Goodbye, AG Sessions … and, yes, good riddance

I feel the need to set the record straight about former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

I have spent some time commenting positively about on this blog for his decision to recuse himself from the Russia probe into the Donald Trump presidential campaign. He faced a clear conflict of interest when he took the job as AG because of his campaign role as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump.

He was involved at some level with the Russians who made contact with the campaign. There were questions about an investigation. Sessions had to recuse himself because of the conflict of interest.

I applauded him for that singular act.

However, he shouldn’t have been selected AG in the first place. The man “earned” the nomination because he was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump’s candidacy.

Prior to his becoming a senator, though, Sessions took on a serious blot on his public service record.

He served as a U.S. attorney in Alabama. President Reagan nominated him in 1986 to a federal judgeship. Then questions surfaced about Sessions’s comments regarding the Ku Klux Klan. Witnesses testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Sessions reportedly had given KKK members a pass until he learned that they “smoked pot.” Four Justice Department lawyers testified they heard Sessions make racist remarks.

The committee eventually voted 10-8 against his nomination. It went to the full Senate for a vote and senators rejected Sessions for the federal bench.

What did he do then? He ran for the Senate in 1996 — and won! He served in the Senate for 20 years until Trump tapped him to lead the Justice Department. He didn’t stand out during his Senate years. Sessions, though, did manage to get embraced by Trump.

Am I glad he’s gone from the Justice Department? Yes and no. I am unhappy that his resignation now clears the decks for Trump to nominate someone who endorses his view about Mueller’s investigation.

Overall, though, I won’t shed a tear that he’s gone. His pre-Senate history was a deal breaker from the get-go.

national news

Trump doesn’t ‘know’ the guy who’ll lead DOJ?

Let me see if I have this straight.

Donald John Trump fired the attorney general, Jeff Sessions. He had a No. 2 guy at the Justice Department who under normal circumstances would be elevated into the top job on an interim basis.

But the president went to the No. 3 guy, Matthew Whitaker.

Then the president tells the nation that he doesn’t “know Matt Whitaker.” That’s right. The president of the United States, who has the authority to name the nation’s top law enforcement officer — our top legal eagle — doesn’t “know” the individual who’ll get the job?

He expects us to believe that? He wants to believe the idiotic lie that the president doesn’t know the individual who’ll call the shots at the Justice Department?

I’ll back up for just a moment. The No. 2 legal eagle at Justice happens to be Rod Rosenstein, who selected special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate the Trump campaign’s allegedly improper dealings with Russian agents who attacked our electoral process in 2016. Trump clearly felt he couldn’t pick the deputy AG because, well, he would allow Mueller’s probe to continue without interference.

So that’s why he went with Whitaker, the guy the president now declares he doesn’t “know,” which is a direct contradiction of what he said earlier about his relationship with the new acting attorney general.

Who in the world does Trump think he’s talking to? We aren’t a nation of rubes who cannot connect the dots. Believe me, there ain’t many dots to connect here as it regards the president and the man he wants to lead the Department of Justice.

I am left to wonder once again, with emphasis and more than a hint of hostility: How does this man continue to win the support of his craven followers?

The president is a pathological liar.

national news

Mitt is correct: Let the Mueller probe proceed ‘unimpeded’

I will admit it: I like U.S. Sen.-elect Mitt Romney much better now that he’s no longer running for president of the United States against Barack Obama.

The Utah Republican has said it is “imperative” that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation proceed “unimpeded” toward its conclusion. The message to Donald John Trump? Don’t fire Mueller; don’t order the acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, to do it; let the special counsel’s probe into alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election conclude under its own power.

Whitaker is the acting AG, succeeding Jeff Sessions, who Trump fired on Wednesday. Sessions got the boot because he recused himself from “the Russia thing.” Trump wanted the AG to provide cover for him. Sessions refused, citing ethical concerns and the obvious conflict of interest, given that Sessions was a player in the Trump campaign and could not investigate himself.

Whitaker is a known partisan. He has criticized the Mueller probe, calling it a “witch hunt.” Not too prejudicial, eh?

Romney well might become a conscience of Republicans in the Senate. After all, during the 2016 GOP primary campaign for president, Romney delivered a scathing rebuke of Trump, who he called a “phony” and a “fraud.”

He was right then. He is correct now that he’s calling on the president to keep his hands off the Mueller probe.

 

national news

He said, he said … to himself

Donald J. Trump is on record telling “Fox & Friends” that he knows Matthew Whitaker, the nation’s newest acting attorney general.

Then the president contradicted himself by telling us he doesn’t know Whitaker. He made the latter statement after appointing him acting AG upon the president’s firing of Jeff Sessions as the nation’s top lawyer.

So, which is it? Does he know Whitaker or doesn’t he?

I’ll take a guess.

Trump knows Whitaker. He knows that the acting AG is no fan of Robert Mueller’s probe into “the Russia thing.”

Thus, the president lied to Americans about not knowing the acting attorney general.

Imagine that.