Monthly Archives: January 2019

national news

Rep. Thornberry steps up and pushes back

Allow me to offer a word or two of praise to a man who used to represent me in the U.S. Congress.

Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Clarendon Republican, has said that Donald Trump is wrong to suggest that military forces can be deployed to build The Wall along our border with Mexico.

That is not a military mission, Thornberry said. It is not in keeping with what we ask our men and women in uniform to do.

Thornberry is the former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and now serves as the panel’s ranking member while Democrats control the House.

Wall-building is not a military matter

“It is disappointing that the best interests of the country do not seem to be everyone’s top priority,” Thornberry said. “We should fund the rest of the government and improve border security, leaving the political posturing behind.”

There’s a touch of “both sider-ism” in Thornberry’s statement, but he is nevertheless correct. Trump has shut down part of the government. He is considering whether to declare a national emergency and he might seek to reallocate defense money to build The Wall.

Thornberry is correct to oppose this nutty notion. It well might be illegal, unconstitutional and might even constitute an impeachable offense. It won’t surprise me if Thornberry steers clear of the illegality question, given his partisan loyalty.

Still, his statement today fills me with some optimism that GOP support for the president’s foolish insistence on building The Wall is beginning to crumble.

International news

The Wall is too costly, obsolete and utterly unnecessary

OK, I now intend to get ahead of the president of the United States, because I pretty much know what he’s going to say when he speaks a little later to his fellow Americans.

He’s going to say we need to build The Wall along our southern border to stop what he says is a horde of terrorists seeking to enter the country illegally. He is going justify the $5.6 billion expense by saying that the alternative is “open borders,” which no sane American wants. Donald Trump is going to foment fear among Americans by declaring that we have to stop this phony menace and he is considering whether to declare a national emergency to do that very thing.

The Wall is a fantasy cooked up by a first-time political candidate in June 2015 when he rode down an escalator and declared his intention to run for the presidency. It drew cheers and hosannas from the faithful.

The Wall won’t do what Trump intends for it to do. It won’t stop illegal immigrants from seeking to enter the country. It won’t stave off any illicit drug traffic. It won’t deter bad guys from doing harm.

As others have noted, we have technology these days that we can deploy: drones, electronic surveillance equipment to name two weapons at our disposal. We can hire more Border Patrol officers and deploy them at entry points identified as most troublesome by federal, state and local authorities.

The threat of terror is overhyped in the extreme. The president is using phony numbers to illustrate what he calls a national crisis. He has told his administration to follow his lead. They are telling falsehoods. They are demagoguing the issue, frightening Americans.

The Wall is a phony remedy to a problem that exists, but not to the extent that Donald Trump keeps insisting that it does.

He will go on the air tonight to tell us our nation is in dire peril from the hordes of rapists, murderers, drug dealers, sex traffickers and international terrorists who, more than likely, are “radical Islamic extremists” packing bombs and assorted weapons of mass destruction.

All the while, part of the federal government remains shuttered. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are in danger of missing mortgage payments, child support payments or credit card payments because they are furloughed — without pay.

Why? Because the commander in chief wants to build a “big, beautiful wall” that won’t do a damn thing.

national news

Whether to believe anything POTUS will say

I am staring a serious quandary squarely in the face.

Donald John Trump will speak to the nation tonight about whether to erect The Wall along our southern border.

I plan to watch him. I plan to listen to every word he says. My quandary is this: How much of it will I believe?

All Americans know — or should know — that this president is arguably the most pathological liar ever to hold the nation’s highest office. He cannot tell the truth even when the truth would play better than a falsehood.

He wants to build The Wall because, he says, the nation is being invaded by terrorists sneaking in across our border with Mexico. The figures belie that allegation. He’ll say it anyway. He is considering whether to declare a national emergency, which he says would allow him to reallocate money to build The Wall without congressional approval.

I’ll watch, listen and ponder what he says.

I also plan to watch the response that will come from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer. They’ll seek to refute whatever the president declares.

I am on their side in this fight. We don’t need a wall to secure our border. The president has decided that The Wall is enough of an issue to shut down part of the federal government.

However, I just cannot believe anything he says . . . about anything!

local news, State news

Sen. and AG Paxton: Let’s avoid conflict

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The Texas Legislature convenes today and will run for the next 140 days — or so — while seeking to do the state’s business. Let’s hope they get it all done in one sitting.

Let’s look briefly, though, at an interesting political juxtaposition.

State Sen. Angela Paxton takes office as a rookie legislator. She won a hard-fought Republican primary this past spring and then cruised to election in the fall.

Then we have Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Angela’s husband, who also won re-election with relative ease in November.

Where might the conflict lie? Well, I’ve been watching Texas politics and government up close for nearly 35 years and this is the first time I’ve been aware of spouses holding elected office in separate branches of government. Yes, we have a father-daughter duo serving at the moment — state Rep. Tom Craddick of Midland and Railroad Commissioner Christy Craddick.

The AG and Sen. Paxton arrangement, though, might present a potential problem once the Legislature gets around to actually legislating. I am thinking specifically of money matters; even more specifically about the issue of salaries for executive branch officials, which the Legislature controls.

How is Sen. Paxton going to avoid any potential conflict of interest if the issue of pay for state officials comes up? Is the senator going to vote to give her husband a pay increase, which could open up questions of whether the senator is feathering her own nest with an affirmative vote? Or, might Sen. Paxton simply abstain?

I would prefer she not take part in any vote having anything to do with financial remuneration involving her husband.

She’s likely smart enough to know better. I trust the AG is as well.

I look forward to keeping an eye on both of them. Sen. Paxton now represents me, as I now reside in Collin County. So does her husband, who as attorney general represents all Texans spread across our vast state.

Be careful, folks.

International news, national news

The Wall becomes a metaphor

Donald Trump promised to build a “big, beautiful wall” if voters would elect him president of the United States.

He got elected. Then he kept hammering home a related promise, that Mexico would pay for it. Mexico  won’t pay for The Wall.

Trump has continued to hype The Wall, which has become the reason he shut down part of the government, furloughing hundreds of thousands of federal employees, putting them in financial peril; oh, but the billionaire says he can “relate” to them. Uh, huh. You bet.

Now The Wall has become something else. It’s no longer going to be a concrete wall. It’ll be made of steel. It will be made of see-through slats. Steel will be “more expensive” than concrete, Trump said.

So, is The Wall going to be built? Or not? Will it be an actual wall? Or will it be a metaphorical symbol?

I am confused. I am baffled. I cannot wrap my noggin around what this goofball is trying to say and do.

Meanwhile, that damn government shutdown continues with no apparent end in sight. Those federal workers are still without any income. Their families’ financial peril is deepening. Donald Trump is trying to make hay out of a fabricated “national emergency.”

What in the name of political insanity am I missing?

Let’s just try to keep this item at the top of our attention: The president pledged that Mexico would pay for it. Now he is demanding that you and I fork over the money — as much as $5.6 billion — to build a barrier that won’t solve a thing.

The president has shut down part of the federal government in order to break one of his signature campaign promises.

This is not how you make America great again!

International news, national news

Sen. King has it right: No one favors open borders

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U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, calls it right.

“There’s no one in Congress that’s for open borders. I am so tired of hearing that you’re either for the wall or open borders. That’s nonsense.”

It’s also demagogic. It is fear-mongering. It is reprehensible.

Yet the president of the United States and his diminishing “base” of supporters keep harping on the lie that those who oppose building The Wall favor “open borders,” which implies a border with no security, no safeguards, no protection of U.S. citizens.

Donald Trump has relegated this discussion to a series of lies and innuendo. It’s old hat for the guy who campaigned for the presidency on a platform built on such lying. Yet he suckered enough voters in just the right states to score an Electoral College victory in 2016, to the surprise of virtually every political “expert” on Earth.

I will continue to harp on this demagoguery for as long as I am able. Trump must be called out for what he is doing. He is fomenting fear where none is deserved.

He’ll go on national TV Tuesday night and possibly tell us whether he’ll declare a phony “national emergency” because of non-existent “terrorists” who he says are “pouring” into the country. They are not. He knows it’s a lie, but none of it matters not one damn bit to the Liar in Chief.

The Wall is a pretext for keeping a ridiculous campaign promise. He said he would build this “big, beautiful wall” to stem illegal immigration. However, he also promised to make Mexico pay for it. Mexico says it won’t spend a nickel. The U.S. president cannot force a sovereign foreign government to do anything. Trump knows that, too — or at least he should know it.

Donald Trump has now resorted to declaring that those who oppose The Wall want “open borders.”

He is lying!

International news

Former POTUSes deny supporting The Wall

There he goes again: lying when he simply could remain silent, let alone tell the truth.

Donald Trump has said that every living former president supports his desire to build The Wall along our border with Mexico.

Oops! Except that they don’t.

Three of the four former presidents have declared that Trump hasn’t discussed the issue with him. Jimmy Carter has just joined Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in denying that they support building The Wall; Barack Obama has been quiet on this particular matter, but his views on The Wall already are well known.

“I have not discussed the border wall with President Trump, and do not support him on the issue,” President Carter said in a statement issued by the Carter Center in Atlanta.

So, I’ll ask the question once again: Why in the name of truth-telling does Donald Trump insist on tossing out these gratuitous lies?

Good grief! The guy can just keep his trap shut. He could simply that “others” support his goofy notion. But oh, no! He’s got to say that the former presidents of the United States have joined him in this idiocy. Except that all of them are of sound mind and are able to speak for themselves, and what do you know . . . they have disputed categorically what Trump has declared.

This is what I mean when I suggest that Donald Trump is so very indelicate and imprudent in his lying. He is a bad liar. He cannot control his impulse to lie when he doesn’t need to lie.

His lawyers all have questioned whether he should agree to talk to special counsel Robert Mueller about “The Russia Thing,” fearing that he could get caught in a “perjury trap.”

The president’s lying about the ex-presidents’ alleged “support” for The Wall now seems to affirm his counsels’ fear about the president committing perjury.

national news

POTUS seeks to rally the base, ‘er, nation?

Donald Trump wants to go on national TV to rally Americans to his side as he pitches the idea of building The Wall along our southern border.

I believe the networks ought to carry the president’s televised speech Tuesday night. Let the man have his say and let the public debate and decide on the veracity of what he is contending.

Trump is considering whether to declare a national emergency to obtain money for The Wall. Why? Because he contends that terrorists are crossing an “open border.” He is trying to gin up fear, in my view, among Americans.

Oh, but wait. We are now getting reports from other sources that say that a grand total of six suspected terrorists were apprehended along the border in 2018, not the reported 4,000 of them alleged by the Trump administration.

Indeed, “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, interviewing White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Sunday, challenged her 4,000-terrorist assertion by declaring that those suspects are being apprehended at our nation’s airports.

So now we’re going to hear from the commander in chief about what looks like a fabricated crisis along our border.

Please . . .

International news

Another terror leader gets ‘justice’

There goes the need for another costly trial.

U.S. military officials have confirmed the death in an air strike of one of the terrorists who planned the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, killing several sailors.

Jamal al-Badawi was killed in a precision strike, according to the Central Command. Al-Badawi was an al-Qaida leader who coordinated the attack on the Cole. The strike that killed him occurred on New Year’s Day in Yemen.

What does this individual’s death mean in the overall war against international terror? Probably not as much as one would hope in the grand scheme. However, the hunt for these monsters goes on and on and on. As it must!

The federal government had indicted al-Badawi on murder charges. Our counter-intelligence officials had been searching for him ever since the attack that occurred in the final weeks of the Clinton administration.

Donald Trump issued a Twitter message saluting the “great military” operation that “delivered justice” to another radical Islamic murderer.

Let us applaud the efforts that have eliminated another terrorist monster from planet Earth. Let’s not relax in our effort to find the cowards.

As the great heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis used to say: “They can run but they can’t hide.”

national news

Big field jockeying to challenge an incumbent

In what we used to think of as “normal” political circumstances, the presence of an incumbent president running for re-election would scare off potential challengers.

Donald Trump, though, has torn up and tossed out political norms. He did so with that amazing 2016 presidential campaign. He’s doing so yet again by attracting a potentially huge field of possible foes who would challenge his effort to win a second term.

Trump was elected president in the first campaign for public office he ever sought. His entire adult life has been centered on garnering wealth, promoting himself and assorted other matters related to self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement.

He is in some trouble politically. Questions are swirling around him. A special counsel might be wrapping up an investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russian operatives who attacked our electoral system.

There might be a whole lot to reveal once Robert Mueller finishes his probe. Thus, we have this potentially gigantic field of Democratic Party challengers. There even might be some Republicans willing to challenge Trump in the 2020 GOP primary.

What is politically “normal” these days? Judging from the size of the field that might be shaping up against Donald Trump, I would say, um, there is not a single thing normal about the upcoming presidential campaign.