Monthly Archives: November 2018

political news

Balance of power shifting in Texas delegation

Here’s a thought or two to consider, according to the Texas Tribune.

Texans who have occupied a lot of chairmanships in the U.S. House of Representatives might be set to bail on the House in the wake of the newfound status as the minority party in the lower congressional chamber.

Buried in the Tribune story analyzing that development is a mention of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, a Clarendon Republican, who might “make the upcoming term his last.”

That’s according to “many Republican operatives” on Capitol Hill, reports the Tribune.

Read the story here

Thornberry won’t be able to serve as “ranking minority member” of Armed Services; GOP rules mandate that he is term-limited out of that rank. So he’ll become just one of the gang of GOP members serving on the panel.

I have a special “bond” of sorts with Thornberry. He took office in the House in early January 1995, in the same week I reported for duty as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News. I covered his congressional career regularly until I left the paper in August 2012. He and I developed a good professional relationship.

I rarely agree with his voting record while representing the sprawling 13th Congressional District, although my position at the newspaper required me to write editorials supporting him, given the paper’s longstanding conservative editorial policy.

And, to be fair, Thornberry has been pilloried unfairly over his more than two decades in office because of the term limits issue. He was elected in 1994 as part of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” team of GOP insurgents. The CWA called for term limits for members of Congress. Thornberry never pledged to limit his own service to three consecutive terms, but he did vote to approve it when the House considered it.

He took office in 1995. It’s now 2018. Twenty-three years after becoming a freshman member of the House, Mac Thornberry is about to become a former chairman of a key congressional committee. The Republican majority is set to become the GOP minority. That, according to the Texas Tribune, might be enough to send Thornberry packing and returning to the Texas Panhandle in 2021.

Yep, elections do have consequences. We’re about to see one of those consequences occur on the new day that is about to dawn over Capitol Hill.

International news

Bolton has lost his spine

I am going to concur with Paul Begala, a former Bill Clinton political confidant and pal, who says national security adviser John Bolton has shown himself to be a coward.

Yes, Begala is a partisan. For that matter, I suppose you can argue that I am, too. Sure, I lean in the same direction as Begala, but I’ve never worked for politicians.

Begala is angry that Bolton has chosen to avoid listening to the recording of slain U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi being slaughtered by his Saudi Arabian captors, who killed him in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

Reporters asked Bolton why he hadn’t listen to it. He said: “Unless you speak Arabic, what are you going to get from it?”

Begala responded in an essay: A lot. You will, presumably, hear struggle. You will hear beating, according to a Turkish newspaper, citing Turkish security sources. You will hear torture. You will hear an innocent man’s final, desperate words: “Release my arm! What do you think you are doing?” You will hear one of the alleged conspirators, who allegedly put on Khashoggi’s clothes to act as a body double, comment that “it is spooky to wear the clothes of a man whom we killed 20 minutes ago.”

Bolton didn’t want to hear that. Nor did he want to ask an interpreter to translate it for him. He said he could “read a transcript” if he could find an Arabic speaker to listen to it.

Read the essay here

Bolton’s crass and callous response defies human decency, in my humble view.

He is the national security adviser, for crying out loud! He needs to hear the screams of a journalist based in Washington, D.C., a Saudi national and a champion of political dissent. He had the temerity to insist on reforms in the land of his birth . . . and this is the response reportedly from the crown prince who allegedly ordered the man’s murder.

The CIA has determined that Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s murder. The president has blown that assessment off. So, too, I guess has John Bolton, choosing to join Donald Trump in the hideous game of disparaging the nation’s intelligence experts.

Cowardly.

national news

Hating the political climate

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Mom always taught me that hating anyone was a step too far. One shouldn’t hate, she said.

OK, Mom, but you won’t mind if I declare my unabashed, unapologetic hatred for the political climate that has infected the atmosphere. I’m glad Mom and Dad aren’t around to see what has happened to our nation . . . not that either of them were particularly political.

Who’s to blame for this? I’m going to lay most of it at the feet of the man elected to “unify” the country. The president of the United States promised to be a unifier once he took office. Donald Trump touts his “promises made, promises kept.” Mr. President, you have failed miserably at keeping this promise.

Trump doesn’t own this poisonous atmosphere exclusively. I’ll concede readily that his political foes continue to whip up the frenzy against him. I also will concede that many of them — I include myself — were stunned speechless Election Night 2016 when the TV networks and other news outlets declared Trump the winner over Hillary Rodham Clinton.

At one level, it’s hard to fathom that event happening. Thus, it well might be that we haven’t gotten over it.

So, Trump knows that. Has he done anything to reach out? Has he sought to mollify the concerns of those who opposed him at the ballot box, those who comprise a solid plurality of Americans who voted for the candidate who lost the Electoral College?

No. He hasn’t. Indeed, he has fanned the embers, whipping them into a firestorm. He speaks only to his “base,” the roughly 38 percent of Americans who stand by their guy. He fires ’em up! He speaks of waves of criminals pouring into the country to commit mayhem; he talks about building that damn wall across our southern border; he threatens to shut the government down if Congress doesn’t pay for it (he has given up trying to get Mexico to pay for it).

The president had the utter gall to say that there were “good people on both sides” of a riot in Charlottesville, Va., in which one of the sides comprised Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists. How in the world does that unify anyone?

The debate atmosphere has become toxic to the max. There appears to be no end to it. Democrats and Republicans detest each other. The president detests Democrats, accusing them of wanting a nation full of lawbreakers, of wanting to take people’s guns away from them.

Donald J. Trump is largely responsible for fomenting an atmosphere of poisonous rhetoric.

It is worth every ounce of hate I can muster.

national news

President ‘Best Words’ keeps on boasting

Donald Trump keeps telling us he is the smartest man in human history . . . or words to that effect.

He went to the “best schools,” he knows “the best words,” he has a “good brain,” he is the “best dealmaker” in the world.

With that noggin full of high-powered gray matter, he says he depends on his “gut” to help him make decisions. His gut determines where to lead the country. Trump’s gut is his — and if you don’t mind my using this term from the recent past — “lodestar” in assessing how to decide key matters. Trump says he depends more on his gut than he does on anyone else’s brains.

What is wrong with all of this?

My belief all along has been that smart people do not brag about their smarts. They don’t feel a need to tell the rest of us lower life forms about their brilliance. They are quietly confident in their knowledge, and in their ability to acquire knowledge.

I know this intimately. Not because I’m particularly smart. I know it because I have some members of my family as well as some good friends who fit that category.

I’ll allude briefly to a family member. He is a retired economist. He is as deep and well-rounded on many matters as anyone I have encountered over my nearly 69 years on Earth. He is a Renaissance man of the first order, a major-league Brainiac. Has he ever bragged openly about his brain, his IQ, his hefty bag of knowledge? Not in my presence. Granted, I haven’t spent every waking hour of every day with this person, but I feel quite confident in asserting that he doesn’t need to tell anyone he knows how smart he is; they know it already.

I want to mention all of this to remind us all that the president of the United States, who takes phony pride in his brilliance is, um, how shall I say it . . . lying!

He is running from the reality of what he surely must know at some level, that he is in over his head, that he is whiffing daily on matters that — for someone as brilliant as he claims to be — should be easy to handle, to resolve.

I also know some folks who are of considerable financial means. They don’t brag about their wealth, unlike Trump, who continually tells us that he is a self-made gazillionaire. But . . . is he? Really and truly?

I don’t know whether he is as rich as he says he is. My hunch is that he isn’t. I am more comfortable assessing whether he is as smart as he claims to be.

I feel confident in saying that his brain isn’t nearly as “good” as he suggests it is. A cursory reading of the utterly mangled syntax in those Trump tweets tells me all I need to know to make that determination.

Uncategorized

Who is Jerome Corsi?

Some guy I hadn’t given a single thought about has emerged as a key player in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into The Russia Thing.

Jerome Corsi is an associate of Roger Stone, a right wing gadfly who is close to Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States. Mueller is trying to determine whether Trump’s campaign “colluded” with Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential campaign. He’s also looking at some other issues related to this matter, including obstruction of justice.

I should not wish ill on anyone, but Corsi deserves some bad vibe.

This is the author, the guy who gave birth (pun intended) to the Barack Obama “birther” lie, that the former president wasn’t eligible to serve as president because he was born in Africa. Donald Trump picked up on the lie and carried it forward for years.

Corsi’s defamation is despicable on its face.

So was his involvement in the “Swift-boating” of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Corsi fabricated another lie, that Kerry — a former U.S. senator and secretary of state — didn’t deserve the medals he earned as a Navy officer during the Vietnam War. Kerry served on Swift boats during the war, was wounded in action and received several medals for valor. Corsi had plenty of help in this defamatory action; it came from none other than former Amarillo oilman T. Boone Pickens, to name just one man.

Corsi was at the center of that lie and sought to discredit Kerry in a shameful act of defamation.

Do I want this guy to escape the clutch of Robert Mueller? No. I want him to pay.

legal news, national news

Trump piles on more innuendo

Donald J. Trump’s list of unsubstantiated allegations keeps piling up.

The latest now is that special counsel Robert Mueller is forcing witnesses to lie about what they know regarding “The Russia Thing” that Mueller is investigating.

Is that what they call “suborning perjury?” Yep, it is. It’s also a patently ridiculous.

Trump goes wild

As usual, the president — who is the target of this probe — offers no proof, no evidence, no corroboration of what he is alleging. Hey, it’s old hat for this guy. He tossed out reckless innuendo so many times already it’s difficult to keep track of them all.

This is the latest example of the desperation that seems to be emanating from the president and his team. Indeed, the more he complains, whines and gripes about Mueller, the guiltier he sounds.

How about just letting the special counsel do his job, issue his report and let the public digest it all?

business news, economic news, national news

Self-awareness is MIA

Donald John “Smart Gut” Trump’s jaw-dropping absence of self-awareness is on full display this week.

He has taken aim at the man he selected this past year to lead the Federal Reserve Board. Jerome Powell took the hit for the reeling stock market, giving Trump the headache of watching people’s retirement funds — such as mine — shrink before our eyes as investors sell off their stocks.

Chairman Powell is not giving anything back to Trump, the president complained. Trump said he is quite unhappy with the selection of Powell to lead the Fed.

For starters, the Fed is an independent agency that doesn’t answer to the president of the United States. Trump doesn’t understand that, along with all the other elements of government he doesn’t understand.

Then he said he has “a gut” that tells him more than “anyone else’s brain” can tell him.

Oh, really, Mr. President?

Well, did your gut tell you to invest in all those endeavors for which you filed bankruptcy before you entered political life? How did Trump University or the Trump Taj Mahal resort work out? Not too well.

Trump’s “gut” let him down . . .  again and again and again!

business news

GM owes its existence to government?

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Donald John “Smart Gut” Trump has blasted General Motors for closing plants and for announcing plans to lay off as many as 15,000 employees as part of a company restructuring.

I laughed when I heard the president declare that the government “saved” GM “and this is the thanks we get.”

Oh, wait! That rescue mission was launched during the first term of President Obama. Do you remember that one? The auto industry was in trouble. The new president got Congress to approve a massive bailout for automakers. The money propped them up, helped preserve them; it saved them from collapse.

Then the automakers paid the government back for the money they received!

I guess what rankles Trump the most is that GM’s decision to lay off those workers turns one of the president’s signature campaign promises into, well, an empty campaign promise.

national news, political news, State news

‘W,’ Clinton showed us how divided government can work

Since I’ve already noted the arrival in Washington this coming January of a form of “divided government,” I feel the need to offer a two brief examples of how it works.

One party controls one branch of government, the other party controls the other. Such a circumstance doesn’t guarantee gridlock or incessant bickering, bitching and backbiting.

Donald J. Trump is going to report for work in January with Democrats controlling the U.S. House of Representatives; his fellow Republicans will retain control of the Senate. It won’t be a fun time to govern. It doesn’t need to be this way.

I give you two examples, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Before he became president, Bush was governor of Texas. He was elected in 1994. The Republican governor took office with a solidly Democratic Legislature in power. Unlike the man who now is president, he didn’t insult, defame or denigrate legislative Democrats. He learned quickly how to forge alliances — even friendships — with those on the other side.

Two men became his BFFs — before the term became widely accepted. They were the late Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, the crotchety, curmudgeonly Democrat who controlled the Texas Senate and House Speaker Pete Laney of Hale Center, the affable Democrat who ran the People’s House.

They formed a trio who respected each other’s skill and who managed to notch some notable legislative victories among them. They sought to give public school teachers a pay raise and increase test scores among students, they dipped into the state’s budget surplus to enact a tax cut, they furthered the push to invest in renewable energy resources.

Two Democrats learned to work with a Republican governor who, after all, had defeated a Democratic incumbent, the late Ann Richards, in a bitter campaign.

But “W” didn’t denigrate his legislative foes. He worked with them, understanding the need to cooperate when possible. To their credit, Bullock and Laney  understood precisely the same thing.

Bill Clinton watched the Democrats lose control of Congress in 1994, two years after his election to his first term as president. Newt Gingrich became the speaker of the House, Bob Dole rose to majority leader in the Senate.

Did the president let that loss of congressional power dissuade him? Hardly. He, Gingrich and Dole managed over time to work together to accomplish a budgetary miracle: a balanced federal budget, the first one of them in about 30 years.

They understood each other, just as “W” understood his legislative partners in Austin.

What lies ahead for the next Congress and the president as they embark on the second half of the president’s term? The indications are that it’s going to be a rough and rocky ride. It doesn’t help that Donald Trump doesn’t have the political chops needed to navigate and manage a political agenda with discipline and finesse. Nor does it help that he has bruised and battered so many congressmen and women with his insults and nasty pronouncements on Twitter.

Oh, and he’s that got that “Russia thing” hanging over his head.

I wish it were different. I fear we’re headed down the slipperiest of slopes. It need not be this way.

national news

Welcome to the world of divided government

I didn’t realize the value of divided government until Americans had the bad sense to elect a patently unfit human being to be president of the United States.

Moreover, they elected a Congress dominated by politicians from the same party as the unfit president.

Two years on, the equation is about to change fundamentally in Washington, D.C. Republicans who controlled the House of Representatives are turning the gavel over to Democrats, who gained possibly 40 seats once all the ballots are counted from this year’s midterm election.

Republicans gained a couple of seats in the Senate, but their margin is still is pretty narrow.

Donald Trump’s GOP — which bears little resemblance to the party it used to be — now is facing a stern wall of resistance in the lower chamber of Congress. Democrats who’ve been insulted and denigrated for two years by the president now are going to control the congressional chamber where all tax and spending measures originate.

What’s more, they are now likely to start asking tough and probing questions about the Trump administration that their GOP colleagues were too chicken to ask when they controlled the House.

Do I want government to grind to a halt while Democrats exact their revenge on Donald Trump? Of course not. However, the president and his closest aides and advisers need to be held to account for the questionable actions that are being examined by, oh, special counsel Robert Mueller.

I don’t give a hoot about how all of this is going to affect Donald Trump’s agenda. For one thing, I don’t know what his agenda really is, nor where he intends to take the country.

I do care that Democrats are going to speak with a more significant voice on public policy and will be able to apply the needed checks on Donald Trump’s misplaced and misguided efforts to do whatever it is he intends to do.