Monthly Archives: February 2019

national news

How do you lie by accident?

This headline appeared on a National Public Radio story about Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman: “Manafort intentionally lied so special counsel, judge says.”

It made me crack open by trusty American Heritage Dictionary. I looked up the word “lie.” It says a lie is “a false statement deliberately presented as true.”

The key word here is “deliberately.” Which begs the question: How does someone lie by accident, or without intending to lie?

The judge has slammed Manafort hard, saying the president’s former campaign chairman lied to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into “The Russia Thing.”

Read the NPR story here

Manafort lied. He did it on purpose. Which is precisely what a lie is defined as being.

I am wondering now about this notion that somehow it is news that Manafort “intentionally” lied to Mueller.

A false statement presented as true by accident is a “misstatement”; it’s a mistake, a verbal gaffe. Manafort has taken a page from his former boss. He lied.

Donald Trump, national news

Still waiting for that ‘presidential’ moment

A critic or two of my blog has noted that I continue to resist referring to Donald Trump by placing the term “President” in front of his name. They don’t like it, calling me disrespectful of the man who was duly elected to the nation’s highest office.

So help me, as the Good Lord is my witness, I am waiting for that moment — or perhaps a sequence of moments — when I can feel as if the president of the United States has earned that honor from yours truly.

It hasn’t arrived. I don’t know if it will. I want it to arrive. I feel like the guy waiting for the bus or the train that’s overdue. I keep craning my neck, standing on my tiptoes, looking for all I can for some sign that the vehicle is on its way.

The same is true with Donald Trump.

As a presidential candidate, the man disgraced himself and the office he sought with behavior that is utterly beyond repugnant. The denigration of the late Sen. John McCain’s heroic service to the nation as a prisoner during the Vietnam War; the mocking of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski’s serious neuro-muscular disability; the insults he hurled at his Republican primary foes; the hideous implication, for example, that Sen. Ted Cruz’s father was complicit in President Kennedy’s murder.

Also, we had that years-long lie that Trump fomented about President Obama’s eligibility to run for and to serve as president of the United States; Trump was one of the founders of the so-called “Birther Movement.”

He brought all that, and more, into the White House when he won the 2016 election.

Since taking office, he has acted like the carnival barker he became as a candidate. His incessant Twitter messaging, the manner in which he has fired Cabinet officials and assorted high-level federal officers have contributed to the idiocy that he promotes.

There have been moments of lucidity from this president. He pitched a much-needed effort on federal sentencing reform; he struck at Syria when it gassed its citizens.

The rest of it has been not worthy of the office this individual occupies.

I want to be able to string the words “President” and “Trump” together consecutively.  I cannot do it.

Maybe one day. Something tells me I shouldn’t hold my breath.

economic news

What? No outcry over the national debt?

This just in: The U.S. debt has just jumped past the $22 trillion mark, rising more than $2 trillion during the first two years of Donald J. Trump’s administration.

I have to ask: Where is the outcry? Why hasn’t the far right raised holy hell about that? Why are acquiring all this additional debt without anyone raising a stink about it?

Didn’t the 2012 Republican Party nominee Mitt Romney once chide President Obama at a charity dinner that the event was sponsored by “the letter ‘O’ and the number 16 trillion”? He was referring to the size of the debt during the 2012 presidential campaign. The quip drew lots of laughs — and a few groans.

However, the GOP was simply aghast at the national debt back then.

This time? Pfftt! Who cares?

Oh, I almost forgot! Donald Trump has referred to himself as the “King of Debt.” All hail the king!

Donald Trump

Hoping POTUS ignores yammering from the far right

If the speculation that Donald Trump will sign the border security deal hammered out by Congress is true, then I want to offer a preemptive word of praise to the president.

He deserves a good word for resisting the yapping and yammering from the far right wing of his Republican Party who contend that the bipartisan deal is a loser.

Well, if you’ll indulge me for a moment . . .

I have yapped at Trump quite often about his adherence to the likes of Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Tucker Carlson — blah, blah, blah — over their efforts to dictate his legislative agenda.

He listened to ’em once on this border security matter and as a result, we endured a partial government shutdown that stained the president badly.

I don’t like all of the deal, either. It’s better than it could have been had congressional Republicans dug in their heels. Instead, they worked out a $1.37 billion appropriation to build 55 miles of “barrier” along the southern border. It’s not what the right-wing gasbags want, but it keeps the government running.

I hope the president heeds the instinct to ignore them, that he signs the deal, and that we can put this idiocy to rest — at least for now.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 143: ‘Forever’ comes into view

PRINCETON, Texas — This picture reveals to you where my wife, Toby the Puppy and I plan to live . . . hopefully for the duration, if you get my drift.

The “Sold” sign means we are in the process of purchasing it. Our retirement journey is taking a gigantic step forward this week. We will “close” on our house purchase in Princeton, about 6 miles or so east of McKinney in Collin County. We’ll lay down some cash, sign a large stack of papers, accept our “smart house” keys and we’ll be on our way.

My wife plans to start immediately laying down shelf liners in the kitchen. We’ll start moving the next day. We’ll take our time, but we won’t dawdle.

Yes, dear reader, this is our final stop.

What fascinates me as I think about it is that Princeton was one of the towns we considered when we first started pondering our move from the Texas Panhandle to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. The thought process came right about the time our son and daughter-in-law informed us that “You are going to be grandparents.”

That was more than six years ago. It took some time for us to make this move, but we did.

I already have told you about how we came upon his dwelling.

I only want to affirm once more the idea that even old folks — such as me — are able to adapt to new surroundings. I long thought of myself as a staid fellow, resistant to change. Then career opportunity knocked in 1984 and we moved our young family from a suburban community near Portland, Ore., to Beaumont, Texas. We stayed in Beaumont for nearly 11 years; our sons graduated from high school and were finishing up their college educations when my wife and I packed up again and moved from the Golden Triangle to the Texas Panhandle. We stayed in Amarillo for 23 years. The arrival of our granddaughter in March 2013 precipitated the move that is about to conclude in very short order in the house you see pictured with this blog post.

This is going to be a huge week for us.

I await it with great joy and excitement. Retirement is no time for complacency.

national news

Listen to your GOP ‘friends,’ Mr. President; sign on to the deal

OK, Mr. President. It’s time for you to deal with reality — for a change.

Those congressional Republicans who have had your back on this fight over The Wall and other border security matters, need to be heeded. They want you to sign on to the budget deal they worked out with their Democratic “friends.”

The deal doesn’t contain every single dollar you want to build The Wall along our border with Mexico. But it does contain billions of dollars on assorted other border security measures.

Trust me on this: You do not want another partial government shutdown. Nor do you want to invoke a phony “national emergency,” because in my view, there is no such emergency on our southern border.

The deal isn’t perfect. No compromise ever produces perfection. For crying out loud, Mr. President, that’s the nature of compromise. You say you’re the best deal maker in human history, so you ought to know how it works, assuming you’re as good as you say you are.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants you to sign on. So do other GOP senators and House members.

Let’s face the stark reality, Mr. President: They know more about politics and government that you do, or you ever will know . . . as near as I can tell.

Listen to these individuals. For once in your life!

local news, media news

Time of My Life, Part 21: What goes around, comes around

It’s no secret that newspapers are cutting staff to maintain their profitability in the face of the changing media climate that has produced declining circulation and advertising revenue.

The Amarillo Globe-News in Texas is no exception — quite obviously! — to that trend. The G-N, indeed, managed to eliminate its entire photo staff over time, instructing the reporters it has left on staff to shoot their own pictures while covering events.

Well, guess what! That isn’t a new notion for some of us who got their start in small-town newspapering back in the day.

My reporting career began full-time in the spring of 1977. I got hired at the Oregon City (Ore.) Enterprise-Courier as a temporary sports writer; the sports editor, one of the very few women in the business, had taken maternity leave to give birth to her daughter. The editor of the paper needed someone to fill in. I applied; he hired me; then a position opened up on the news staff and I was allowed to stay after the sports editor returned from her leave.

Part of my job was to take pictures along with reporting on events I was covering. Football games? Basketball games? Wrestling matches? I packed my notebook and pen — and a camera! Then I became a general assignment news reporter, so I took my camera to city council, school board and county commission meetings. I had to take what we called “wild art” photos we would publish without a story accompanying them.

I knew how to report on those events and how to write about them in cogent manner. Photography was a brand new concept. I had to learn about “photo composition” and how to eliminated “dead space” in pictures.

That was just part of it. I also had to learn how to develop those pictures. Yes, we had dark rooms back then. They had basins filled with smelly chemicals into which we had to dump our film. Then we had to dry the film on lines strung across the dark room. Once the negatives were dry, we then had to print what we called “contact sheets,” which were “positive” reproductions of the images on the “negatives.”

Yes, those were days when reporting and writing also include plenty of picture-taking. We were well-rounded back then, just as reporters today are being asked to become more well-rounded now.

I hope the kids today have as much fun as I did back in the journalism “stone age.”

media news

Incumbents quite often got our nod

I published a blog post this week in which I declared that the Amarillo Independent School District board of trustees needs to get a serious electoral wake-up call from voters this year. The board has delivered shabby treatment to a young high school girls volleyball coach, meaning that it didn’t measure up to its public office.

Then came a question from the reader of the blog. He wondered how many times during my years as an opinion writer and editor I endorsed those who challenged incumbent officeholders.

That was what I described to him as a “tremendous question.”

I edited editorial pages in Texas for nearly 30 years: 11 at the Beaumont Enterprise and nearly 18 years at the Amarillo Globe-News.

I had the pleasure of interviewing likely hundreds of political candidates during all those years.

I told the reader of my blog that during that time our newspapers recommended the re-election of incumbents far more frequently than we recommended the election of newcomers.

Why stay the course? Well, I suppose we placed a huge premium on experience. Absent overt malfeasance or incompetence on the part of incumbents, we usually gave them the benefit of the doubt. If the communities they served were doing well economically, they quite often deserved some measure of credit for that performance.

Sure, we would go with challengers on occasion. In Beaumont, the Enterprise once recommended the election of former Beaumont Mayor Maury Meyers, a Republican, over incumbent U.S. Rep. Jack Brooks, the irascible Democrat who chaired the House Judiciary Committee; Brooks won re-election anyway, but held a bit of a grudge against yours truly for authoring the editorial. Many years later, the Amarillo Globe-News recommended the election of Patti Lou Dawkins over incumbent Randall County Judge Ted Wood in the county’s Republican primary; Wood defeated Dawkins.

Perhaps the most controversial non-incumbent endorsement we made in Amarillo occurred in 2010 when we recommended former Houston Mayor Bill White over Texas Gov. Rick Perry. White, the Democratic nominee, got thumped by the Republican governor. The reaction from our readers was ferocious. But . . . we called it the way we saw it.

But over the span of time, we usually went with the incumbent mostly on the basis of the experience they brought to the office.

All of this, I suppose, is what got my blog reader’s attention when I recommended that the AISD board of trustees incumbents get shown the door when Election Day rolls around later this year.

I just try to call ’em the way I see ’em.

International news

‘Unhappy’ Trump should sign off . . . then move on

Donald Trump is far from the first governing executive to be “unhappy” with legislation that comes to his desk.

The president says he is displeased with the bipartisan deal that came out of Congress to enhance border security, keep the government running and allow all sides to get the heck off each other’s backs.

The deal provides about $1.4 billion to build portions of The Wall that Trump wants to erect along our southern border. It is far less than the $5.7 billion that Trump insisted on spending for The Wall.

Let’s get real here.

It’s all about ‘border security’

The president wants ostensibly to tighten border security. His insistence on The Wall is what has stymied progress in unifying the White House with congressional Democrats on the issue. The president keeps insisting that Democrats actually favor “open borders” and by association embrace increases in crime committed by criminals who come into this country illegally.

That is pure nonsense. Demagoguery at among its worst. It is phony, bogus and ridiculous.

Trump has been contending in recent hours that we’re already building The Wall along our border. He even urged rally crowds to change their chants from “Build the wall!” to “Finish the wall!” Clever, yes?

Whatever. Trump’s unhappiness with the deal appears to rest solely on the money it doesn’t contain. Does it boost border security? I believe it does. It allocates money to erect more barriers, but also enables the deployment of more technology, more border personnel.

Isn’t that all aimed at the same thing, to make our country more secure? What in the name of national security is wrong with that?

I’ll say again, Mr. President: Sign off on the deal! Let’s move on to all those other issues that need our government’s attention.

Hey, I’ve got an idea: How about climate change? Or gun violence? Or our electoral integrity? How about all of them . . . and more?

national news

What have they done to your party, Mr. President?

Dear President Lincoln,

Wherever you are, I want to wish you a happy 210th birthday. Man, we have gone a long way in this country you once led in the years since you came into this world. I’m glad you were here, although you preceded me by, well, many years.

Mr. President, I am writing you this note while wondering once again what in name of emancipation has become of the party that used to carry your name.

Not long after you left us, Mr. President, Republicans began referring to themselves as belonging to the Party of Lincoln. They were proud of the legacy you left, the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves, your fight to preserve the Union, the leadership you showed while the nation fought to save itself against the insurrection mounted by the Confederate States of America.

They took that pride well into the next century, Mr. President. Republicans joined hands with a Democratic president, Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas, and helped enact the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and 1965, laws that bestowed full citizenship rights to all Americans, especially toward those African-American descendants of the slaves you freed.

But your party has morphed into something quite different, Mr. President. It’s now the party of Trump, as in Donald John Trump. It has become the party of nativism, of fear, of jingoism. To be sure, your party began marching down that road many years prior to that. Donald Trump was elected president and he has grabbed your party by the throat and sought to create a political entity that bears no resemblance to the party you once led.

Please understand, Mr. President, that you remain a hero to many of us who came along much later. We studied your presidency and understood how troubled you were for the entire time you served as our commander in chief.

I am one who wishes we still celebrated your birthday separate from the other presidents. Your time in office stands alone. The federal government, though, decided not too many years to meld your birthday into something called Presidents Day; it falls usually between your birthday and Feb. 22, which is when President/General Washington was born in Virginia. However, we now honor all the men who have held the office.

Granted, some of them deserve to be honored in such a manner. Not all of them, though. You might already know how I feel about the current president, so I’ll just leave that statement unsaid.

Happy birthday, sir. I wish your once-great party could find its way out of the darkness.