Monthly Archives: November 2018

environmental news

As long as we’re talking about what we ‘believe’ . . .

Donald John Trump says he has read “some” of the much-discussed National Climate Assessment, says it is “fine,” but then adds quickly that he doesn’t “believe it.”

What doesn’t he believe? He doesn’t believe the projection from the government-ordered analysis of the impact of climate change on our economy. The Assessment projects a 10 percent decline in our Gross Domestic Product if we fail or refuse to do anything about climate change.

This report comes from the government. Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Connect the dots here. OK?

So, as long as we’re talking about what we “believe,” I happen to believe that Donald Trump shouldn’t be president of the United States. What’s more, I want to suggest that more people share my belief in his unfitness for public office than share Donald Trump’s belief as it regards the National Climate Assessment.

International news

Welcome to America . . . just bring your gas mask

You’re a refugee fleeing repression in a Latin American country. You trek to the southern border of the Land of Opportunity. You and your kids, maybe with your elderly parents, are greeted by U.S. Army soldiers and Marines.

Then you get gassed. Those troops deployed by the commander in chief are under orders to prevent everyone from entering the United States. One way to keep you out is to gas you.

This is no way, none at all, to manage the border. It is no way to prevent illegal immigration. The refugees who are seeking safe harbor from the tyrants who run their countries back “home” deserve something far better, more kind than what they’re receiving.

I have tasted tear gas. It got my snootful twice while training at Fort Lewis, Wash., in the summer and fall of 1968 in the U.S. Army. It really and truly sucks, man. The second douse came while I was low-crawling under barbed wire. Our sergeants popped a nausea agent. Yep . . . I puked!

This is how we intend to “greet” those who seek protection from those who would do them harm. Wow! I never would have thought I would see this happening in our country.

Appalling!

political news

Rep. Love throws no ‘Love’ back at POTUS

Donald J. Trump took an unusual and uncalled-for step after the midterm election by saying that those Republican candidates who kept their distance from him lost their bids for election and re-election.

The president’s singling out of those candidates, to be candid, was an unconscionable exercise in attention-diversion.

Well, one of those GOP candidates who lost a re-election effort, U.S. Rep. Mia Love of Utah, fired back at the president while conceding this week to her Democratic opponent.

“Mia Love gave me no love and she lost,” Trump said prematurely the day after the midterm election. “Sorry about that, Mia.”

They weren’t finished counting ballots. Rep. Love might have won. She didn’t. She conceded today to Ben McAdams, and then asked why the president would behave in such a crass manner toward her and her fellow Republicans.

“However, this gave me a clear vision of his world,” Love said in her concession. “No real relationships, just convenient transactions. That is an insufficient way to implement sincere service and policy.”

I want to single out the phase “sincere service.” I know that Rep. Love is aware of this, but Donald Trump doesn’t have a sincere bone in his body, unless he’s talking about himself and his so-called success and the “tremendous difference” he says he has made on the nation.

The president exhibits a decided lack of class far more often than most of us want to see and hear. That moronic singling out of Republicans who didn’t give him sufficient “love” is yet another example of the man’s unfitness for public office.

environmental news

Trump buries report that disagrees with climate-change screed

Donald John Trump won’t admit this, but he doesn’t know anything about science. For that matter, neither do I. Thus, I am left to heed the analyses given by actual scientists, people trained to study things that go far above my level of understanding.

Climate change, for example.

The federal government itself has issued a report that says the hazards presented by Earth’s changing climate are going to accelerate. The National Climate Assessment is done by living, breathing experts on this stuff.

What’s the president’s response? He doesn’t believe them. He has buried the report because it disagrees with his own “belief” that climate change is a hoax. He’s said so repeatedly. He stands by his view about climate change. It’s made up. Fabricated. A product of “fake news.”

He tweets idiotic messages that take note of a cold spell and asks, “Where’s global warming?” As CNN’s Chris Cillizza has declared: A warming planet doesn’t mean there won’t be cold days. Or even cold weeks! Or months! It means that, in the long seep of history, the planet is getting hotter and hotter. And that those changes in the climate produce more wild and unpredictable weather events, like tornadoes and fires.

Scientific agencies such as, oh, NASA, take note of the evidence they have witnessed over time: ice caps are shrinking, sea levels are rising, Earth’s annual mean temperatures are increasing.

Humankind is burning too many fossil fuels that are spewing carbon gases into the air; we human beings are encroaching on natural habitat, level vast expanses of forest, taking down trees that replace carbon dioxide with oxygen.

The president doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand what’s happening. He continues to repeat the lie that climate change is a hoax, that it’s not actually happening.

His own National Climate Assessment says the exact opposite.

Who do you believe, a politician/serial liar or the experts who study these matters intensely? I’m all in with the experts.

State news

Tom Craddick: testament against term limits

Fifty years is a long time to do anything, whether it’s selling shoes, branding cattle . . .  or writing legislation.

Tom Craddick, a feisty Midland Republican, is about to cross the half-century mark as a Texas legislator during the upcoming legislative session. I’ve had some differences with Craddick, dating back to when I was editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News. That was then. Today I want to say a good thing or two about this Texas Capitol institution.

He and I got crossways some years back when he engineered the ouster from the Texas House speaker’s chair of Pete Laney, a Hale Center Democrat, whom the newspaper supported. Laney was no flaming liberal as speaker and did a good job representing the Texas Panhandle while running a relatively smooth Texas House of Representatives.

Then the Republicans took control of the House and Craddick cast his eyes on that big ol’ gavel that Laney wielded. He enlisted the help of Laney’s Panhandle pals — namely fellow Republican state Reps. John Smithee of Amarillo and David Swinford of Dumas. They turned on their old friend, Laney, and backed Craddick for speaker.

We became angry with Smithee, Swinford and Craddick for depriving the Panhandle of a powerful voice . . . and we said so on our Opinion page.

Craddick sent me a testy letter in response. I responded with equal testiness.

That was a long time ago.

Laney, from what I understood, took his ouster personally. He retired from the House and became a lobbyist. Craddick, though, is still on the job, 50 years after being elected the first time.

Craddick ran the House with a heavy hand. It helped him shepherd legislation through a GOP-controlled chamber, but his tactics also created plenty of political enemies.

Since leaving the speakership himself in 2009 after enduring — ironically — an ouster from his fellow Republicans, Craddick has continued to be an effective legislator.

I applauded his work, most notably, in persuading the Legislature to impose a ban on handheld cell phone use while driving. Craddick was tireless in his pursuit of that legislation over the course of five legislative sessions. It was an odd sight to see: a Republican legislator in a heavily GOP state that endorses “personal liberty” working hard to enact a bill that critics decried as a “nanny state” measure. Gov. Rick Perry vetoed it in 2011, but then Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law in 2015.

Tom Craddick, I submit, is a walking, talking, breathing testament against term limits. He’s been on the job for 50 years and, according to the Texas Tribune, hasn’t lost an ounce of zest for the job of legislating. He’s done a good job for his Permian Basin constituents, who continue to send him back to Austin to work on their behalf.

Tom Craddick is one tough dude. Stay with it, sir.

Sports news

Texas Tech coach is out . . . despite all the love

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Kliff Kingsbury has been fired as head football coach at Texas Tech University.

He was a fan favorite. Kingsbury played quarterback at Tech. He was reportedly destined to be the Red Raiders’ head coach.

Tech’s athletic director heaped praise on him for his character and for being a great role model for his players. Tech’s president said much the same thing and thanked Kingsbury all he did to advance the school’s football program.

Give me a break, will ya?

Neither of them said a word publicly about the reason Kingsbury was canned: He didn’t win enough football games. He had a losing record as a head coach.

All that happy talk was chock full of platitudes.

I feel badly for Kingsbury. I just wish his bosses wouldn’t speak with so many clichés that don’t mean a single thing.

political news

Pay attention to me, Gov. Kasich

Ohio Gov. John Kasich still wants to be president of the United States and says he is considering taking another run at the nation’s highest office in 2020.

I’m usually not in the mood to offer campaign advice to Republicans, but I believe Gov. Kasich, whose time in office ends in December, is an impressive fellow. I wanted him to win the GOP nomination in 2016. I well might have voted for him had the choice been Kasich or Hillary Clinton.

OK, now for the advice.

If he’s going to challenge Donald Trump for the GOP nomination, he needs to avoid the trap of being lured too far to the right. One of the more undersold aspects of Kasich’s 2016 candidacy was his role as chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee in forging a balanced federal budget in the late 1990s.

How did he do that? He worked with the Democratic president, Bill Clinton, in crafting a balanced budget that actually built surpluses during the final three years of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Yes, Kasich was a key player in achieving a stellar budgetary accomplishment. He chose not to tout that aspect of his public service career because it would have revealed his bipartisan tendencies. That ability to reach across the aisle is anathema to the hard-core, right-wing loony birds who call the shots these days in the Republican Party.

Are they going to keep calling the shots in 2020? I haven’t a clue at this moment in time. I hope not. Even if they do, though, I want to encourage John Kasich to shout it loudly and clearly: He believes in good government, which requires compromise and cooperation with everyone regardless of party affiliation.

I want this man to run yet again for president. He was one of the few GOP grownups running in 2016.

national news

It’s all about Trump

Donald Trump’s self-obsession, his uncontrollable urge to take credit for everything and to toss aside blame for anything, simply affirms what some of us have said since the moment this guy declared his candidacy for president of the United States.

His entire adult life has been calibrated for self-enrichment, self-aggrandizement, self-promotion.

The president issued some kind of statement over the weekend about the things for which he is grateful. Did he mention the blessing that have come his way? Did he talk about his family? Did he speak to the liberties we enjoy as Americans? No. He spoke to the “tremendous difference” he has made on the nation.

He was delivering remarks at a recent White House ceremony in which he honored several Americans with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The president just couldn’t resist taking personal credit for the nation’s stellar economic performance.

He gives himself an A+ grade as the first half of his term approaches.

Time and time again — and I cannot even think of all the instances he’s done this — Donald Trump turns everything inward. He internalizes every single thing he deems to be a positive development.

I have been saying since the moment he began his political career — which commenced on that escalator ride in Trump Tower when he announced his candidacy — that Donald Trump’s entire life has been geared toward his own enrichment. Public service is a totally foreign concept to this man. He’s been president for nearly two years and it’s still a foreign concept.

He cannot empathize with those who face nature’s wrath. He doesn’t appreciate the service others give to the nation. Trump doesn’t grasp the need for him to step forward as the nation’s consoler, a sort of lay pastor, someone who ministers to a nation in mourning.

Fires exploded in California and he blamed the state’s forest management policy. When a hurricane savaged Puerto Rico, the president said it wasn’t a “real tragedy” such as what happened in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina stormed ashore; then he got into a terrible feud with the mayor of San Juan.

It’s all about Trump. All the time.

Moreover, it is totally consistent with this individual’s life before he became a politician. Many of us saw it from the beginning of his campaign for the presidency and rejected it; others embraced this man and his self-aggrandizing nature.

What I cannot fathom is how those who embraced it then continue to do so now.

national news

A feud ended 55 years ago today

Ex-Presidents Truman and Eisenhower outside St. Matthew’s Cathedral after President Kennedy’s funeral, 55 years ago today.  According to , this picture was taken after they saw young JFK Jr. salute his father. On this day, Truman and Ike ended their 11-year feud.

This Twitter message came from presidential historian Michael Beschloss, who posted it with this picture I am sharing here.

The photo was taken at JFK’s funeral. It shows his two immediate predecessors, President Harry Truman (left) and President Dwight Eisenhower. The “ClintHill_SS” referenced in the above tweet is the name of the Secret Service agent who climbed aboard the limousine carrying the president and first lady as gunshots rang out in downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

The two men disliked each other intensely. Their domestic and foreign policy differences became personal between them. Ike succeeded Give ‘Em Hell Harry in January 1953 and the two men barely spoke to each other for the decade that preceded President Kennedy’s brutal murder.

Then the two former presidents came to pay their respects to their slain successor.

And while there they buried the hostility they held toward each other. As Beschloss noted in his tweet, the picture was taken as the two men saw John Kennedy Jr. salute his father’s casket as it wheeled past him.

I had learned long ago about the Truman-Eisenhower feud. It ended when they sat together and listened to the tributes to the young president who succeeded Ike in 1961. The youngest elected president was laid to rest and the two old warriors laid their antipathy toward each other to rest at the same time.

It’s a long-forgotten, but still poignant testimony to the fragility of Earthly life. Ike and Truman got to live to become old men, something denied to JFK. The two presidents came to that realization when President Kennedy was laid to rest.

It’s one of life’s most valuable lessons.

national news

Heroes accomplishing their mission

I cannot say this enough, so I’ll repeat myself gladly.

The heroes who answered the call in California can all but declare they have accomplished their mission: The deadly Camp Fire is now 100 percent contained.

Those heroes happen to be the firefighters who risked their lives trying to save the lives and property of others. They battled the deadliest fire in state history. They report now that they have surrounded the blaze and have been able to contain it. Yes, it’s still burning, but now the firefighters can continue their work to extinguish the blaze.

Texas firefighters hustled out west to help their California colleagues. Indeed, firefighters from several states rushed to aid the beleaguered heroes in California. This is what they do. They rush courageously into the flames, working day and night to quell the inferno. This longtime Texas resident is proud of the contributions made by my fellow Texans to aid those stricken by this horrifying event.

They are heroes. Each of them perform heroic deeds. I am so proud of them and the service they deliver to those who need it in the most desperate conditions imaginable.

Roughly 14,000 homes have gone up in flames. Many thousands of people are going to rebuild their lives, either where their homes were incinerated or somewhere else. Our prayers go out to them.

The Camp Fire, to be sure, is just one of several fires burning in California. This one is the largest. It needs to be quelled for keeps, but the heroes have at least cleared a major hurdle by surrounding the fire. It’s contained.

Thank you so much for the heroism you have displayed.