Monthly Archives: March 2019

Uncategorized

Hush money because of ‘love for family’?

Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds appeared on CNN, where he was interviewed by the network’s John Berman.

They said the following to each other, as reported by Salon.com:

“This is a jarring juxtaposition, the president accused of writing payoffs to porn stars at the same time he’s conducting presidential business,” Berman said. “As you look at this, are you okay with all of this?”

“Most of us have a concern anytime you have a president who is trying to work through some very personal matters,” said Rounds. “I honestly think this president loves his family. I think it has as much to do with trying not to have public discussions about something that is, for him, a private matter that he didn’t want to have discussed with his family. I think that’s a lot of it.”

Wow, man!

So, let me get this straight. The future president allegedly had a fling with an adult film actress. Then, while he’s running for the presidency of the United States, he paid her “hush money” to keep quiet about an event that he continues to insist never took place.

Go figure.

POTUS loves his family.

According to one of POTUS’s allies in the Senate, he paid the money out of “love for his family.”

Well, alrighty. I happen to believe that Donald Trump took that tumble with Stormy Daniels.

That said, I believe a man who truly loves his family wouldn’t have cheated on his third wife — who had just given birth to the president’s fifth child — in the manner that I believe he did.

medical news

Let there be a second school of veterinary medicine

Texas Tech University’s effort to build a school of veterinary medicine in the Panhandle is moving along.

The university is getting plenty of help from Amarillo government and civic organizations, from private citizens. The city and its economic development arm have pledged $69 million to build the school near the existing Tech medical school campus.

I want the school to be built. Tech sees a need for large-animal veterinary medicine care for the Texas Panhandle and wants to build the vet school in the community that can best serve the region’s agriculture community.

I wrote about this project in an installment posted on KETR-FM, the public radio station based at Texas A&M University-Commerce. I am glad that KETR saw fit to run it, given that I chide the A&M System for what I consider to be its silly resistance to the Texas Tech project.

It’s how I feel. I am not alone. A lot of folks in the Panhandle believe as I do, that Texas is a big enough state to be home to two university-based schools of veterinary medicine.

I want to encourage you to read my post on KETR-FM’s web site. You can read it here.

I just feel like sharing it on my blog, too. Share it if you wish.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 148: Feels like the first time

This is going to sound strange, coming from someone who’s been married for 47-plus years, but I’ll say it anyway.

I am feeling almost like a newlywed in this new home of ours.

This ain’t our first home-buying experience. Not by a long shot. The house in Princeton is No. 5. It’s quite likely our final stop before they throw me into the ground.

My wife and I find ourselves talking about the house. We talk about how much like its kitchen, or its back yard, or its master bath. Whatever . . .

We end up reminding ourselves of when we were first married. Y’all know what I’m talking about when I mention how we used to refer to each other as “my husband” and “my wife.”

Suffice to say we don’t do that any longer. It’s been a rapid-fire four-plus decades. The house is a different matter.

We moved from the Texas Panhandle to the Metroplex in May 2018 after living full time for a period of time in our fifth wheel. We sold our Amarillo house in March 2018, but lived in our RV while we prepped the house for sale. Once we got it ready and put it on the market it was gone — poof! — just like that.

I figure the time between the purchase of this home and the previous one — 23 years! — means that we were primed for this sort of emotional reaction to the new place.

Now we’re residing in our “forever” home. We’re here for the duration. The next stop will be the final one . . . and you know what I mean.

For now, we’re making an enjoyable acquaintance with our new digs in Collin County. To be honest, I don’t want the newness to wear off.

environmental news, State news

Just not caring about Daylight/Standard time

I guess I should care about this. Except that I don’t. Really, I don’t.

Some members of the Texas Legislature want the state to stop switching back and forth each year between Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time. They say the “spring forward” and “fall back” routine causes too much sleep deprivation at the front end, when we push our clocks forward an hour. We’re going to do it again Saturday night; we’ll awaken Sunday morning with one less hour of shut-eye to get our day started.

And, of course, many of us will bitch about it!

I just don’t see the significance of it all. I continue to recognize the motive behind enacting Daylight Saving Time in the first place. It was intended to help conserve energy by allowing us to not turn on our lights and, thus, burn electrical energy when we don’t need to do it.

As for the sleep deprivation, I learned long ago that however tired we might be on the first day of switching to Daylight time, we get over it quickly. We adjust. We human beings are adaptable creatures.

If we’re going to end the back-and-forth, though, I propose we stay on permanent Daylight Saving Time. I like having the sun in the sky a little longer at the end of the day.

Now . . . I am going to get back to the things that really matter, at least they do to me.

local news, Sports news

One AISD incumbent is out; will other two get the boot?

Three incumbent Amarillo public school trustees’ seats are to be decided in an election this coming May.

Two of them are seeking re-election: Jim Austin and John Betancourt. The third, Scott Flow, did not file to run for another term. More than a half-dozen challengers have filed for the election of the at-large seats.

It’s all just as well. The incumbents are on the hot seat. The election might turn on how the school board handled the resignation of a popular Amarillo High School coach, who left the AHS vaunted girls volleyball program after just a single season.

Kori Clements quit, citing a lack of administrative and school board support in the face of pressure she was getting from a parent who didn’t like that her daughter wasn’t getting enough playing time. The school board heard from constituents this past month and did nothing, other than accept the coach’s resignation without comment.

It has been a pretty disgusting display of reticence. The coach deserved better from the administration and from the board.

Oh, I guess I should add that the offending parent also is a member f the Amarillo Independent School District board. Shameful . . . if true.

So, do not be surprised if trustees Austin and Betancourt get the boot in May. Given their conduct in the Kori Clements matter, they will have deserved it.

national news

Yes, I agree: Something is wrong with DJT

Bob Cesca isn’t a medical or a mental health professional, to which he admits. He writes for Salon. com and is a critic of the president of the United States, Donald John Trump.

That all stipulated, I have to agree with his essay in Salon: There is something seriously wrong with Donald Trump.

Just watch his two-hour tirade at the Conservative Political Action Conference the other day. I don’t know how one can reach any other conclusion after watching the president’s extraordinary rant in front of the CPAC faithful.

Cesca takes particular note of the time Trump — while running for president in 2016 — mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski’s disability. Imagine him doing that for two hours, Cesca wondered. I can’t go there. The image of candidate Trump’s hideous mocking of Kovaleski is just too disgusting on its face.

Take a look at Cesca’s essay here.

And yet the Trump Faithful continue to hang on to his every idiotic statement, every one of the absurd insults he hurls at those who oppose him. They cheer him on. They whoop and holler. They chant things like “Lock her up!” even without prompting.

They have no sense of what they did when they managed to give this fool an Electoral College victory in 2016. Why, he speaks their language. It’s as if they all would do and say the same thing if they had a stage as large as the one occupied by the 45th president of the United States.

Indeed, there appears to be something wrong with this guy. I’m not sure if it’s pathological. It’s just . . . something.

Scary, man. It’s damn scary.

national news

Manafort gets off easy for serious crimes against the country

Color me surprised. Shocked, maybe!

Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who faced a sentence of as long as 25 years in prison, today got a 47-month prison sentence in what has been labeled one of the major surprises in the string of cases being litigated against political friends of the president.

Manafort was convicted of an array of tax and illegal lobbying charges. He cheated the country out of millions of dollars in taxes. He hid money in offshore bank accounts. He lied about it. He lobbied illegally on behalf of Ukrainian interests.

It’s all seedy and quite unseemly.

The president calls Manafort a “good person.” The judge said he had no criminal history prior to his involvement with the Trump campaign. Hmm. A lot of criminals commit single crimes in their lives and then get tossed into the slammer for the rest of their lives.

I am among many Americans who expected Manafort to get a much lengthier sentence than he got today.

Has justice been done? I suppose you could say in a technical sense that it has been done. A federal judge has wielded his substantial discretionary power in giving Manafort a light tap on the knuckles.

But . . . there’s more to come. Much more, indeed.

national news

John Kelly turns on Trump? Shocking! Just shocking!

John Kelly has served his country with honor, courage and distinction.

Now the former White House chief of staff is telling us that many of Donald J. Trump’s policies are wrong for the country.

The wall along our southern border? Kelly, the retired four-star Marine Corps general and combat veteran, says now that the wall is a non-starter. Donald Trump’s national emergency doesn’t exist along our southern border.

“Waste of money”

He said building a wall “from sea to shining sea” is a “waste of money.” Gee, do you think?

He said of all the jobs he has held, the chief of staff gig was the worst among them. Kelly also said that he wasn’t working for Trump but was seeking to serve the country.

Gen. Kelly also declared that had Hillary Rodham Clinton won the 2016 election he would have worked in her White House.

He kept quiet during his time as chief of staff. He also didn’t argue out loud over the wall issue when he served as homeland security secretary before moving into the chief of staff job.

That tells me he is a good Marine . . . always faithful, if you will.

He is now free to speak his mind and from his heart.

media news

Trump, Fox News form frightening alliance

Presidents of the United States have enjoyed cordial relationships with the media over the past 200 years of our republic.

John F. Kennedy was pals with Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. Ronald Reagan and Walter Cronkite were known to be quite friendly. There have been others, too.

Have any of them, though, sought actual policy advice from media pundits the way Donald J. Trump has reportedly done with Fox News Channel anchors and other on-air personalities?

There is a certain strangeness that crosses the line into frightening about the Trump-Fox relationship. It is unseemly, particularly given the “fake news” tag the president plasters on other news organizations, be they print or broadcast.

This peculiar alliance has prompted the Democratic National Committee to ban Fox from hosting any of the planned Democratic primary presidential debates coming up later this year. DNC chairman Tom Perez made it clear: Fox has become entirely too intertwined with the Trump administration to be considered a fair and impartial media organization. So the DNC won’t allow Fox to participate in the party’s series of debates.

When a Fox News talking head, Sean Hannity, takes the microphone at a Trump campaign-style rally, he crosses the line from an ostensible “journalist” to becoming a campaign flack.

There can be little doubt, therefore, about the correctness of the DNC decision to shut Fox News out of the party’s nominating process.

legal news

Re-read your oath, Your Honor

A Texas state district judge needs to take another look at the oath he took when he became a judge way down yonder in Comal County.

On Jan. 12, 2018, Judge Jack Robison ordered a trial jury that had voted to convict a woman of sex trafficking and the sale and purchae of a child to reconsider its verdict. He said God had told him the woman was innocent and that her conviction would be a “miscarriage of justice.”

The Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct has issued a public warning to the judge. A public punishment is deemed more severe than a private one, as it puts the sanction against a jurist on the public record.

The jury, by the way, did not acquit the woman; it still found her guilty of the crime and sentenced her to 25 years in prison. An appeals court, though, declared a mistrial stemming from the judge’s outburst.

Why re-read the oath? Because the only time the judge even says the word “God” is at the very end when he or she says “so help me God.” Judges take an oath to uphold state and federal law and to be faithful not to God but to the  U.S. Constitution.

Judge Robison blamed his outburst a year ago on a memory lapse related to some medication he was taking. And to his credit, he did report himself to the judicial conduct commission.

Still, it would be instructive for this judge — as well as all other jurists — to understand fully what their solemn oath entails. They pledge to be faithful to laws written by fellow fallible human beings.

Whatever devotion these judges feel toward the Almighty needs to be kept private.