Monthly Archives: March 2019

national news

The People’s House has spoken loudly about Mueller report

It doesn’t get much more explicit than that.

The U.S. House of Representatives, in a 420-0 vote, has approved a resolution demanding that special counsel Robert Mueller III’s report be released to the public once he submits it to Attorney General William Barr.

I want to thank the members of Congress for agreeing with me. And for agreeing with millions of their constituents who believe — as I do — that Mueller’s findings into whether Donald Trump’s campaign “colluded” with Russians who had attacked our electoral system be made public.

Hey, it’s our money that has paid for this excruciating examination into the president’s affairs. Mueller, a former FBI director and a stellar lawyer, has spared no effort in the eyes of many to get to the root of the questions that have swirled around the presidency since before Donald Trump took the oath of office.

Trump has said it is “totally up” to Barr to decide whether to release the report. I wish I could depend on the president to be true to his word. But . . . I cannot. He is a serial liar.

However, the People’s House has spoken with a clear voice. Its members want the report released to the public.

I agree with them.

Now, let’s just wait for the special counsel to finish dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.

environmental news, local news

Oh, the wind takes its toll

We awoke this morning, flipped on the TV and watched the Metroplex weather forecasters going apoplectic over the wind, rain, thunder and lightning that tore through the region.

Our lights in Princeton flickered off for about 20 seconds, then came back on. That was it. Yeah, it was a frightening time this morning before dawn.

The storm raced across the region, which turned out to be a bit of a blessing. It wouldn’t linger long and tear the daylights out of people’s homes, motor vehicles and assorted other structures.

Then we got word of the wind that roared across our former home in the Texas Panhandle.

Sustained blasts of 50 mph, with gusts of 80 mph.

But here’s where my heart breaks. A lot of trees blew over. The wind ripped them out of the ground by their roots. They fell into houses, onto motor vehicles, were laying on street surfaces. The good news is that I haven’t heard of any human casualties. For that we all should be grateful.

The heartbreak occurs because if you’ve seen the High Plains region of Texas, you know it lacks trees. They cherish their trees in that part of the world. There was the time, for instance, when the Texas Department of Transportation proposed culling some trees along U.S. 60 in Hemphill County; you would have thought TxDOT had hired the devil himself. The outrage was ferocious; TxDOT backed down.

Yes, I know you can plant new trees. They’ll grow and replace the flora that’s been destroyed by Mother Nature’s fury.

Still, I hate hearing about the loss.

Keep the faith, everyone.

national news

‘No collusion’ mantra: another Trump lie

Read my lips: Paul Manafort’s sentencing for crimes committed had nothing — not a damn thing! — to do with whether the Donald Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russians who attacked our electoral system in 2016.

Are we clear? If not, I shall explain.

Manafort, the president’s one-time campaign chairman, has received roughly 7 1/2 years in federal prison on an assortment of tax fraud charges. He wasn’t charged with collusion. He did not stand trial on charges of collusion.

He was sentenced for unrelated crimes.

So, why is the president continuing to say the judges who sentenced Manafort to prison have found “no evidence of collusion”? Why did Manafort’s lawyer repeat that phony assertion today?

I am beginning to understand better why Trump keeps saying it. He’s trying to divert attention from the issue at hand: the conviction and sentencing of his former campaign chairman. Trump says things without thinking because, well, he’s the president of the United States. He’s also not nearly as smart as he keeps telling us he is.

Manafort’s lawyer, an officer of the court, surely should know better. But there he was today, bellowing over the shouts of demonstrators that it’s been proved that Trump’s campaign didn’t collude with Russians.

C’mon, man! Stick to the issue of the day. It is that Paul Manafort has apologized for the crimes he committed. None of it had anything to do with collusion.

Now . . . are we clear? Good!

national news

Beto’s big announcement is the real thing

I guess Beto O’Rourke’s “big announcement” is going to be what everyone in America suspected it would be.

The former West Texas congressman is going to run for president of the United States of America. He is going to make the announcement on Thursday.

OK. Now what? How am I supposed to feel about this? I’ll be candid: I am not sure yet how I feel about a President O’Rourke.

I can explain this a couple of ways. Compared to the man who’s currently in the office, I feel better about Beto and I do about Donald, as in Trump.

Beto O’Rourke is No. 13 among the Democrats who have declared their intention to seek their party’s presidential nomination in 2020. More will be jump into the moat. There will be at least one more major candidate to announce: former Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

Beto captured many Texans’ imagination when he nearly beat Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. That he was able to finish just a couple of percentage points behind the Cruz Missile in heavily GOP Texas still has state Democrats salivating.

Now he’s going to enter the huge field of Democrats.

I sense a certain sort of Bobby Kennedy freneticism in Beto’s candidacy. Just as RFK scrambled to assemble a presidential campaign in 1968 and ran a frenzied race for 85 days before tragedy struck, I sense that Beto might be modeling his 2020 after Robert F. Kennedy.

As an aside, I should note that the late New York senator’s name was Robert Francis Kennedy; Beto’s proper name is Robert Francis O’Rourke. Karma, anyone?

I’ll need to hold my breath for Beto’s entry. I wanted him to defeat Sen. Cruz. I am not yet convinced he is ready for the Big Chair in the Big Office.

However, I can be persuaded.

Uncategorized

Struggling with social media

Oh, I hate struggles with technology I have difficulty understanding when it works well.

When it tanks on me, then I go ballistic.

I am having struggles at this moment with Facebook. It is a social medium I use to help distribute my blog. I also use Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and, of course, WordPress, which is the platform I use to write these musings.

Facebook is driving me just a bit south of stark-raving, bat-sh** crazy.

My Facebook news feed is incomplete. Not all of its features show up when I seek to open it. My blog posts have a “share” button and I usually send copies of each post to my personal time line and to a page called “High Plains Blogger,” which I was able to create.

Facebook isn’t allowing me to do that. I get error messages and pledges to fix the platform as soon as possible.

So far, no luck. It’s still on the fritz.

I’ll keep sending these musings to Twitter.

I also intend to hope for the best and that Facebook will get its act together.

 

national news

Democrats take page from Republicans

It wasn’t that long ago when congressional Republicans were clawing at each other. You had the TEA Party wing vs. the Establishment wing.

The TEA Party cadre was far more ideological, far more zealous in pursuit of its agenda. The TEA Party wing ended up driving John Boehner out of the speaker’s chair and out of public office. They tore a page out of the Democrats’ playbook that called the shots during the 1960s, when the Hawks battled the Doves over whether to fight the Vietnam War.

A decade later, Republicans have (more or less) settled in behind the president of the United States, Donald Trump.

Which brings me to the Democrats’ current state of play. The progressive wing is battling the Democratic version of the establishment wing.

The progressives want to impeach the president now. The more seasoned of them say “no.” They’re fighting openly with each other.

One big difference? I do not expect Speaker Nancy Pelosi to give up the fight. She doesn’t want to impeach the president, at least not  yet. The progressives in her caucus aren’t hearing the last part of it; they seem to hear “no impeachment” and go ballistic.

My own advice to the Democrats’ far-left wing is to wait for the special counsel, Robert Mueller, to finish his job. Attorney General William Barr is going to let his collusion probe finish under its own power.

If Mueller produces the goods, then they can talk openly about impeachment. Not beforehand.

national news

POTUS decides correctly to ground those jetliners

I’ve been thinking the past 24 hours about whether I would fly aboard a Boeing 737 MAX 8.

I would not.

One of those high-powered, high-tech jetliners went down in Ethiopia, killing all 157 people on board. The tragedy forced much of the world to put the jets in service on the ground.

Today, Donald J. Trump joined them, announcing that the jets in service would take passengers to their destinations and then they would be sent to their hangars until further notice.

It’s the correct call.

Working with the Federal Aviation Administration, the president made the announcement and determined that there needs to be a full accounting for this crash, which mirrors a similar tragic accident that occurred just a few weeks ago.

Is there something wrong with the jet? Is there a flaw in its flight rigging, or its computer-guided system?

Ethiopian Airlines reportedly is a first-class air carrier. Its crews are competent. Thus, it appears that pilot error is unlikely as the cause for this tragedy.

I am not flying anywhere anytime soon. All I can declare at this moment is that if I were booked on one of those 737 jets, I would insist on getting on another type of aircraft.

Let’s learn the cause of this aviation tragedy.

entertainment news

Is POTUS now going to stop tweeting about late-night comics?

Donald Trump says he’s no longer going to watch late-night comics because they’re too rough on him.

Yep, the president just can’t take all the jokes at his expense from the likes of Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Myers, Stephen Colbert and occasionally Jimmy Fallon.

Former “Tonight” host Jay Leno has been making the rounds the past couple of days telling TV hosts that he’s a bit annoyed that the comics have been too tough on Trump. He wants a more bipartisan approach to poking fun at politicians.

If the president is telling the truth about changing his TV-watching routine, I wonder if that means he’ll cease firing out Twitter messages blasting late-night comics’ stand-up routines that draw all kinds of laughs.

Well, I am not going to hold my breath.

Donald Trump cannot help himself.

media news

Blog alert! Having trouble publicizing these musings

High Plains Blogger uses several social media platforms to publicize its musings, missives, essays . . . whatever.

Facebook is one of them. At the moment, your friendly blogger — me! — is experiencing difficulty with Facebook.

I have notified the gurus at Facebook trying as best I can to explain the issue. I keep getting messages that say they’re working on the problem.

I’ll continue to post items on High Plains Blogger, but will depend on Twitter as my primary publicizing platform.

Bear with me. And with Facebook.

national news

‘Big announcement’ coming from Beto?

Beto O’Rourke’s political team says the former West Texas congressman is planning a “big announcement.” It will come perhaps later this week.

Everyone this side of the Trans-Pecos believes O’Rourke is going to announce he is running for president of the United States in 2020. Yep, that’s a big announcement, all right.

Think about an alternative.

Is it a “big announcement” for Beto to say that after all the deliberation with his wife Amy and their friends and confidants that he’s decided to wait until 2024?

Donald Trump is certain to be gone by then. Perish the thought that he actually runs for re-election and wins next year. Anything is possible, as Trump’s election in 2016 demonstrated in all its narcissistic glory.

Run, Beto. Run?

O’Rourke, who once represented El Paso in the U.S. House and came within a cow chip toss of defeating Sen. Ted Cruz this past year, is showing all the signs of becoming a presidential candidate in 2020.

I just want to suggest that a “big announcement” can arrive in more than one form.