Monthly Archives: March 2019

national news

Promise made … promise broken

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Donald Trump made a solemn vow while campaigning for the presidency of the United States of America.

He said he wouldn’t be a typical Republican. He said he would leave Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security spending alone. He wouldn’t touch them. He would solve the nation’s budgetary woes — as he defined them — without laying a hand on those valuable social programs.

So, what does the president do when he presents his fiscal year 2020 federal budget? He proposes cuts to Medicare by $845 billion, cuts for Medicaid by $1.5 trillion and reduces Social Security spending by $25 billion.

His record-setting budget of $4.75 trillion does add money for the Department of Defense.

Broken promises

My point here is that Donald Trump persuaded many American voters that he would leave these coveted programs alone.

OK, he has officially stuck it in our household’s eye. My wife and I are retired Americans. We draw from our Social Security accounts and we also depend on Medicare to help with our health care needs; I also have Veterans Administration benefits to assist with my health care issues.

Is this the bargain the nation got when it elected this promise-breaker president of the United States?

International news

Trump throws scare into flying public … nice!

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An Ethiopian Airlines jet crashes after takeoff and 157 people from 35 countries — including eight Americans — perish in an instant.

What, then, does the president of the United States say? He declares that air travel has become too complicated. You need to have an engineering degree from MIT to fly these jetliners, Donald Trump says via Twitter.

The head of Boeing Co., called the president and asked him to dial back his rhetoric about commercial air travel. He tells Trump flying remains a safe way to travel.

However, the president once again demonstrated his remarkable lack of empathy and compassion. What’s more, he also doesn’t explain why federal aviation regulators continue to let the Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliner fly in this country while most of the rest of the world is grounding the jets.

It’s the second crash of this “state-of-the-art” aircraft in recent weeks. What’s going on with this airplane?

Astounding.

national news

Ivanka and Jared privileged? No-o-o-o!

I have sought to keep quiet about Ivanka Trump, daughter of the president of the United States. I guess it’s time to speak about her.

It’s not that I relish taking shots at a president’s daughter. Ivanka Trump, though, isn’t your run-of-the-mill presidential “child.” She is a senior policy adviser to her father, as is her husband, Jared Kushner.

The pair now have become subjects of a book that details how they parlayed their kinship to the president to acquire enormous power within the West Wing of the White House and how they attained that power with no discernible credentials — other than Ivanka’s father is the president.

Kushner Inc.

The book is titled “Kushner, Inc.” and chronicles how both of them were the children of domineering fathers who greased their entry into the business world. The book, though, does say that Donald Trump was a “disengaged” father during Ivanka’s coming of age years.

Vicky Ward wrote the book and it is sure to bring out the Trump critics who will note that Ivanka and Jared are given tasks for which they have no qualifications. Ivanka supposedly works on job creation for women; Jared is in charge of forging a Middle East peace.

The way I see it, Jared Kushner is the one who is farther out of his league. He has zero credentials negotiating a diplomatic solution to centuries of warfare among people with historic hatred for each other.

Yep. They’re grifters. Their benefactor, the president, has said that qualified individuals are banging on the door seeking to work within his administration. He calls them the “best people.”

Ivanka and Jared do not qualify by any measure to be of the quality required for the access they have to the nation’s most sensitive secrets.

national news

Far-left Dems need to take a chill pill

Let’s catch our breath for a moment or two, shall we?

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she does not favor impeaching Donald John Trump. She says the president “isn’t worth it,” which I interpret to mean that she thinks so little of him that he isn’t worth the emotional and political capital it would cost to impeach him.

So, she is putting impeachment on the back burner. For now.

I did not hear the speaker say that impeachment would never be an option for the House to consider.

Look, the speaker is no fool. She is a seasoned political hand. She knows the lay of the land in the House that now comprises a Democratic majority, which is how Pelosi got to become speaker again at the beginning of the year.

Pelosi is waiting — along with many of the rest of us — for Robert Mueller to finish his task. He is wrapping up an investigation into whether Trump’s campaign for president “colluded” with Russian government goons in 2016 to influence outcome of that year’s election.

She knows she likely has enough Democratic votes in the House to impeach Trump; it requires only a simple majority. The bar is much higher in the Senate, where the president would stand trial. Two-thirds of the Senate need to cast votes to convict the president. Pelosi knows that there aren’t enough Republican votes to finish what the House would start.

Might there be enough to GOP votes to convict Trump if Mueller produces compelling evidence? Might there be something coming from the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York that would sway GOP senators?

The speaker is waiting for all that to play out.

Meanwhile, the far-left wing of her Democratic Party House caucus needs to chill out. Stop the impeachment yammering. Settle down and worry about legislating matters that come before them.

There might be time to get serious about impeaching this president.

Or, there might be nothing at all.

I am one American who is willing to wait for the special counsel to finish his job.

national news

How might Joe Biden channel The Gipper? Here’s how

Joe Biden is the political star of the moment.

Democrats are waiting with bated breath for the former vice president to declare his expected candidacy for the presidency of the United States. He’s dropping hints all over the place that he’s decided to make one final run for the top job.

Oh, and then we have former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke who’s playing a similar cat-and-mouse game with Democrats and the media. He, too, is sounding and looking like a candidate in the making.

Here’s my thought about all of that.

Biden is in his late 70s; Beto is in his mid-40s. I harken back to 1976 when former California Gov. Ronald Reagan challenged President Ford for the Republican presidential nomination.

Gov. Reagan shook things up a good bit by naming Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Richard Schweiker as his running mate prior to the GOP nominating convention in Kansas City, Mo.

Is there an avenue for Biden to select O’Rourke as his VP running mate and the two of them could run as a ticket for the Democratic Party’s nomination next year?

Oh, probably not. If they both run for POTUS, they’re going to run against each other. Then one of them will drop out. Maybe they both will, which of course makes this whole notion a moot point.

But suppose Biden’s support among rank-and-file Democratic voters holds up and he secures the nomination next year in Milwaukee. I could see him declare that he would serve just one term and then he could select someone such as Beto as his running mate.

Biden would be the candidate who could clear out the Trump wreckage. Beto would be the candidate of the future who could carry Biden’s message past the president’s single term.

This is not a prediction. It’s merely a scenario that has played out before. Granted, Ronald Reagan didn’t get the GOP nomination in 1976. He laid the groundwork, though, for his 1980 campaign and subsequent landslide victory over President Carter.

I believe that if Biden runs, this will be it. If so, then he could have a ready-made successor waiting in the wings.

media news

Customer service must be Priority No. 1

It’s no secret that American newspapers are in trouble. They are struggling to remain competitive in the ever-changing mass media market.

They need advertisers to spend money to keep the newspapers afloat. Ad representatives work hard — or at least they should be doing so — to keep their clients happy.

Newspapers also need subscribers to buy their publications. How do they gain subscribers to read their content and then keep them well into the future? Customer service, man. They need to put customer service at the very top of their standard operating procedure.

The Internet is inflicting serious damage on newspapers. Cable TV is now full of commentators, pundits, news anchors, “contributors” and experts on every field imaginable telling viewers about the news as well as what all those individuals believe about the news that is occurring.

Newspaper circulation is dropping. So is advertising revenue.

Thus, newspapers are in trouble.

OK, now that I’ve laid all that out, I want to share how one major American newspaper is squandering its standing in one American household . . . mine!

My wife and I recently moved from one Dallas suburb to another one — from Fairview to Princeton.

Before we made the move, we took out a subscription to the Dallas Morning News; our subscription was for the Wednesday and Sunday editions only. It arrived at our Fairview residence just fine.

Then we moved. I called the Morning News circulation line and provided a change of address. The DMN delivers to Princeton, so we didn’t figure that would be a problem.

Wrong! I guess it is a problem. We have lived in our new home for two weeks and we haven’t seen a newspaper yet. It’s not in our front porch, or on the front lawn, or the driveway or even in the street next to the curb. Nothing!

We have called every day since we missed our first DMN. Nothing has happened. I get excuses about the paper’s inability to hire competent delivery personnel as well as promises that it would come in the next day . . . or two. Again, nothing.

I offer this as an example of how one major publication is pis**** away a chance to lure and keep a subscriber. That would be me.

Hey, I am a newspaper reader of long standing. If only the newspaper I want to read could make good on its pledge to deliver it to my home.

There’s a lesson here. Newspapers are floundering. Many of them are failing. I want the Dallas Morning News to heed the warning sirens that are blaring all across the nation.

national news

Former VP Biden looks like he’s in . . . sigh

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Joe Biden is sounding increasingly like someone who’s decided to make yet another run for the presidency of the United States.

Oh . . . my. This situation fills me with great emotional conflict.

I admire the former vice president greatly. He has served in public life with distinction. He has occupied a large spot on the national stage, starting with his election to the U.S. Senate in 1972.

Have there been missteps, hiccups, embarrassing moments along the way? Yes. He was caught plagiarizing remarks from a British politician; he has been prone to assorted verbal gaffes throughout his public life.

He ran for president in 1988 and again in 2008. The plagiarism rap torpedoed his earlier run. He lost to Sen. Barack Obama two decades later and then ran with the future president to two historic election victories.

Biden also has endured tragedy. His wife and daughter were killed in that horrific traffic accident prior to his taking office in the Senate. His elder son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. The VP wore his emotions on his sleeve. He endured and has carved out a largely successful public service career.

He’s now 77 years of age. I want a fresher face to run for president and to challenge Donald Trump in 2020.

That all said, if it comes down to a Trump-Biden contest next year, there’s no doubt who would get my support.

I just want someone else to go for the gusto.

national news

Now the lies are getting, um, really strange, man

There can be no doubt about it. The Liar in Chief’s prevarications are getting bizarre in the extreme.

Donald Trump is now boasting about winning a golf tournament at his Mar-a-Lago, Fla., resort. Except that he didn’t play in the tournament!

Golf Magazine reports that a plaque has appeared in the men’s locker room at Mar-a-Lago proclaiming Trump to be the 2018 men’s champion of a tournament that went on without him.

Huh? Eh? What?

Weird, yes? Yes! It is!

Mythical golf championship

Now there’s the Tim Cook fiasco.

The president played host to the CEO of Apple, Inc. at the White House the other day. He mistakenly referred to Tim Cook as Tim Apple. The reporters picked up on it. They reported it. It was recorded on live audio. I’ve heard it. Yep, the president said “Tim Apple.”

Now he says he didn’t say it. But . . . but . . . you did, Mr. President.

Furthermore, Trump said he inserted the word “Cook” quietly between “Tim” and “Apple,” but that the “fake news” reported only the “Tim Apple” reference to, um, embarrass the president.

Mr. President, you already are an embarrassment. You need no assistance from the media to shore up what many millions of us know about you already.

Good grief!

education news

AISD trustees need to face some community anger

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A part of me wishes I could write the script for the upcoming election of the Amarillo Independent School District board of trustees.

If I could dictate how this election should be determined, it would have to be on the issue of school board and administrative support of educators who work directly with the children who attend the city’s public school system.

You know where I’m coming from, of course. My issue is predicated solely on the shameful exhibition of cowardice exhibited by the school board when a highly regarded girls volleyball coach resigned after one season at Amarillo High School, which has developed one of Texas’s most vaunted girls volleyball programs.

Kori Clements turned in her resignation letter that blasted administrators and board members for failing to support her in the face of a parent’s gripes over the way the coach was parceling out playing time for her daughter.

The school board remained silent. Administrators did, too. The coach resigned. Members of the community stood up for her; so did several members of the Sandies volleyball team.

The worst part of this story is that the offending parent — who hectored the coach and allegedly made an unannounced visit to the coach’s home to hassle her over playing time — is a member of the board of trustees.

The board accepted her resignation without comment.

So, AISD’s constituents — those who pay the bills with their property taxes — are left to still wonder: What gives with the school board?

Three seats are up for election in May. Two of the incumbents are running for re-election: Jim Austin and John Betancourt; a third one, Scott Flow, did not file for re-election.

I want all the school board candidates to answer the question directly: How do you guarantee that educators have the support of the administration and the board that they deserve?

Hey, I don’t live there any longer. I remain deeply interested in this story and hope it plays out eventually the way it should.

national news

Democrats split over impeachment

So, here we are.

Congressional Democrats comprising the fiery left-wingers and the “establishment” wing are at each other’s throats over whether to impeach Donald John Trump.

The firebrands want to impeach the president now. They’ve heard and seen enough to persuade them that Trump has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. Thus, it’s time to impeach — in the words of one of the House rookie Democratic bomb throwers — the “motherf*****!”

Oh, but wait. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is slamming the breaks on that move — at least for the moment. She opposes impeachment. Pelosi, one of the experienced hands on Capitol Hill, doesn’t want to go there.

“I’m not for impeachment,” she says.

Pelosi speaks wisely

I happen to agree with Pelosi. Yes, that’s right. Critics of this blog think I am frothing at the mouth to impeach the president. Not true.

I want to wait for special counsel Robert Mueller III to finish his job of investigating whether there was “collusion” between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russian government goons who attacked our electoral system.

Moreover, I also believe Pelosi’s mind can change if Mueller’s report reveals some impeachable nastiness. There’s also the Southern District of New York, the federal judicial district that is looking deeply into possible criminality. The SDNY also needs to finish its work as well before we should determine whether there are grounds to impeach Donald Trump.

But for now the speaker is speaking wise words of caution. She is a seasoned politician who knows if she has enough bipartisan support to proceed with impeaching the president. She has calculated that she doesn’t have it. Impeaching the president would be a loser for her and House Democrats.

Pelosi is a wise woman.

Just as Republican members of Congress engaged in fights between establishment politicians and TEA Party fanatics, Democrats are engaging in something quite similar at the other end of the big political spectrum.

The GOP establishment had the country’s best interests when it fought with the TEA Party over spending. The Democratic establishment has the upper hand over the issue of impeaching Donald Trump.

But . . . let’s wait.