Monthly Archives: April 2019

national news

‘No obstruction’? Not exactly

I respect Hugh Hewitt, a noted conservative pundit, columnist and Donald Trump fan.

However, I believe he is mistaken when he repeats the president’s mantra about the findings released by special counsel Robert Mueller. Hewitt wrote this in an essay published in the Washington Post: 

“Last week’s message from a booming economy should have rocked the Democratic field. Alas, the party seems collectively intent on poring over the Mueller report yet again in the hope that, somehow, someway, there’s something there. But the probe is over. No collusion. No obstruction.”

Whoa! Let’s stop there for a moment.

I concur with the “no collusion” finding. The “no obstruction” assertion is a figment of Donald Trump’s imagination and that of Attorney General William Barr and millions of Trumpkins around the country.

The special counsel did not conclude there was “no obstruction.” He left it wide open. It is unanswered. Indeed, Mueller instead cited several instances where Trump sought to obstruct justice. Mueller said the president sought to fire the special counsel, but that White House counsel Don McGahn and other key aides resisted.

Mueller left it up to Congress to make whatever determination it will make regarding obstruction of justice.

As much as I respect Hugh Hewitt’s intellectual wattage, he is getting way ahead of himself — right along with the president — in asserting that there was “no obstruction.”

I am willing to wait to see what Congress determines. The president’s base should do the same.

national news

Our hearts are broken once again

Another day, another shooting in a house of worship.

I don’t intend to make this sound like a sort of “new normal.” But, damn, there are far too many of these tragedies occurring.

The latest spasm of violence occurred this weekend in Poway, Calif., in a synagogue. We can’t call this one a “mass slaughter,” given that one woman died; three others were injured.

The shooter appears to be someone who had been involved in an arson fire at a mosque in Escondido, another San Diego County community not far from Poway.

One of the particularly heartbreaking aspects of this tragedy is that the woman who died, Lori Gilbert Kaye, took bullets aimed at Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who suffered minor wounds in the attack. Kaye died later in a hospital, but she has emerged clearly as a heroic figure in this ghastly event. She shielded the rabbi from death. How does one come to grips with that?

The gunman was captured later by an off-duty Border Patrol agent, who drew praise from Donald Trump, who offered his “thoughts and prayers” for the congregants of the synagogue.

The shooter reportedly left a note that referenced the recent mosque massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand after the mosque fire in Escondido.

Hate crimes are persisting in this country. Is this yet another demonstration of the intolerance that appears to have been given new life by the tone and tenor of the political rhetoric we are hearing around the country?

My goodness! We need to come to grips firmly and assuredly with this menace. This nation needs leadership from the very top of its political chain of command to commence that discussion.

Thoughts and prayers aren’t nearly enough.

national news

Russia, not the media, is the ‘enemy of people’

I already have stated my regret at dismissing Mitt Romney’s assertion in 2012 that Russia was this nation’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” He was right; those of us who criticized him were wrong.

Moreover, I also have stated — and restated countless times — my belief that Donald Trump should accept that reality and start treating the Russian government as the “enemy” it is.

I’m going to do so yet again. It likely won’t be the final time, either.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, in a talk before the Council on Foreign Relations this past week, said the Russians are working 24/7/365 at trying to undermine our electoral system. They did it in 2016, he said, and again in 2018. They are hard at work setting the table for what he called “the big show,” which would be the 2020 presidential election.

Where is the president on all of this? He’s nowhere, man.

Instead, he is attacking the media, Democrats, special counsel Robert Mueller, climate change advocates, abortion-rights activists. Political foes are fair game.

Russian President Vladimir Putin remains somehow protected from the same level of outrage that Trump levels at his domestic opponents. Why in the world is that the case?

Perhaps that is the question that the 2020 campaign will flesh out over time.

Trump stood before the media in Helsinki and trashed his intelligence and counterterrorism experts and accepted Putin’s denial that the Russians interfered in our election. He has continued to denigrate the intelligence community and continued to go soft on Putin, who — I hasten to add — is a former Soviet spy master.

Donald Trump is unloading his barrages on the wrong targets. The media aren’t the “enemy of the people.” Nor are Democrats. The FBI comprises professional law enforcement and legal professionals dedicated to protecting this nation from its enemies.

One of those enemies happens to function inside the Kremlin. That enemy is seeking to continue the work it started upon the 2016 Republican presidential candidate’s invitation to look for Hillary Clinton’s “missing e-mails.” That candidate, of course, was Donald John Trump.

The candidate-turned-president must cease his attacks on the media and focus them instead on the real No. 1 enemy of this nation and its citizens.

medical news

Trump takes demagoguery to shocking level … even for him!

Donald Trump’s shamelessness knows no bounds.

He exhibited it yet again this weekend in Green Bay, Wis., when he accused women and their doctors of committing criminal acts.

The president got all fired up and then told his adoring crowd of Trumpkins that women and their doctors deliver babies, talk about how to care for the baby, wrap the child up — and then decide how to “execute” that child.

Oh, the throng loved it. They cheered the president and booed the scenario. Except that he lied. What he described does not happen!

Yet for this president to continually demagogue the issue of abortion, of whether a woman should be able to choose whether to carry a child to full term simply astonishes many of us beyond our ability to declare our revulsion.

It’s illegal, Mr. POTUS.

The nation does not allow the “execution” of babies. Such a crime would be produce at minimum a life sentence in prison in most states. Yet there he was this weekend, spouting even more outrageous lies.

Donald Trump is the most indecent human being ever to occupy the nation’s highest office.

media news

Biden should channel G.W. Bush?

Mark Shields is well-known to watchers of PBS’s “NewsHour” as a regular commentator and pundit who, along with his pal David Brooks, regularly assesses the week’s political goings-on.

Shields had some good advice for Vice President Joe Biden: Don’t talk too much when trying to explain yourself over questions regarding how you “invade others’ space” by getting too touch-feely.

Biden entered the 2020 presidential race amid questions and complaints from those who said he was a bit too, um, ebullient in his treatment of them.

Even now, the former VP tends to over-talk himself while explaining his actions. Shields had a reasonable option for Biden to consider: Model your response after former President George W. Bush’s manner in dealing with some of his own past behavior.

Shields noted (and it’s in the video attached to this blog post) that when Bush ran for president in 2000, he was dogged by questions from the media about his drunk driving arrest, how he drank too much alcohol and about how he found religion and sobriety at the age of 40.

Bush developed a pat answer, Shields said, which was: “When I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish.” 

Shields said that the future president recited that mantra with such regularity and frequency that reporters got tired of asking him about it. The issue effectively faded away during the course of the 2000 campaign.

Good advice to follow? Oh, sure . . . but only if the media still lack the staying power to keep harping on an issue that can be explained in a single sentence or two.

national news

Sen. Graham embodies GOP hypocrisy on impeachment

I want to stipulate up front that I do not favor impeaching Donald J. Trump, at least not at this moment. I need more “proof” that he has committed an impeachable offense than what we’ve seen to date.

However, I am laughing out loud at the talk we’re hearing from Republican members of Congress who are performing a remarkable act of duplicity while ignoring the issues surrounding Trump’s troubles. These matters mirror in many instances the same issues that drove them to impeach President Bill Clinton in 1999.

The star of this duplicitous comedy is Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Two decades ago, he was a House member from South Carolina. He “managed” the GOP impeachment effort on the floor of the House; Graham, after all, is a lawyer who at the time of President Clinton’s impeachment served as a judge advocate attorney in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

He argued passionately that lying was an impeachable offense. Yes, the president committed perjury by swearing to tell a grand jury the truth, but then lied about his relationship with what’s-her-name.

The much younger Rep. Graham, though, took it farther. He said that efforts to block congressional inquiry into those matters were impeachable. Yes, he said that the Clinton team’s alleged effort to impede the congressional inquiry constituted a “high crime and misdemeanor” worthy of impeachment.

Isn’t that precisely what is happening now? Donald Trump has instructed his entire White House team to resist subpoenas being issued by various House committees. He even is seeking to block someone who no longer works in the White House — former WH counsel Don McGahn — from testifying. The president — to borrow a time-honored term born during the Watergate scandal of the 1970s — is “stonewalling” Congress on various matters that lawmakers deem important.

Where does Sen. Graham and most of his GOP colleagues stand on all of that?

Huh? Oh! The silence is deafening.

State news

Enforcing state law: tough, practically impossible

I have run out of ways to express my delight in the Texas Legislature’s decision in 2017 to outlaw the use of handheld devices while driving anywhere in this state.

Moreover, I also am glad that Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill into law, rather than vetoing it, which his predecessor, Rick Perry, did foolishly, citing a ridiculous notion of “invasion of privacy.”

I also am delighted to see that Texas has posted signage on highways entering the state informing motorists that using a handheld device while driving is against the law. We spotted such a sign recently while returning to Texas along Interstate 20 after spending a night in Shreveport, La.

However, I am not totally happy about the outcome. The law is virtually unenforceable, whether the motorist is violating a municipal ordinance or a state law. You see, police cannot be everywhere at once!

My wife and I this every evening were walking along a street in Princeton, not far from our home. We noticed a driver speeding north along the street, exceeding the posted speed limit by a healthy margin. The driver was yapping on a cell phone; thus, she was breaking two laws simultaneously. For all I know she might have plastered to the gills or high as a kite to boot.

Whatever. My point is that these laws are intended to be enforced, but I don’t know how the cops can catch everyone doing it.

Then again, there’s another critical element. It well might be that the Legislature understood the difficulty in enforcing this law, but set up strict penalties for motorists who become distracted by these devices and, therefore, cause motor vehicle accidents.

That’s a reasonable alternative.

local news

Parking garage needs some paying tenants

They’re experiencing the hiccups at Amarillo City Hall, I venture to guess.

Why? Well, the city built this parking garage across the street from Hodgetown, the shiny new ballpark where the Amarillo Sod Poodles play hardball. Part of the selling points the city pitched with the garage would be the plethora of businesses that would pay rent and, thus, repay the expense of building the structure in the first place.

All the storefronts are empty.

The Sod Poodles are playing before big crowds at Hodgetown. They’re winning a few, losing a few. Fans are having a good time, as far as I can tell from my vantage point in Collin County.

According to the Amarillo Globe-News: “We’ve always known that space would come on line as soon as the ballpark opened up,” Mayor Ginger Nelson said . . . “We had almost 42,000 people attend ball games in the MPEV over the course of the last week and I think it’s important for that data to establish what  great location that is.”

Am I going to push any panic buttons? Am I going to declare that the parking garage, the ballpark and the downtown revitalization effort is for the birds, that it’s a loser, that all is lost?

Hah! No way, man!

However, perhaps the marketing gurus the city has employed — and I am quite certain there is no shortage of such “experts” — can ramp up the public-relations effort to lure more businesses into that parking garage.

I will say this much about the garage, Hodgetown, the gleaming Embassy Suites hotel on Buchanan Street: Taken together, they have remade the appearance, the ambience and the “feel” of downtown Amarillo.

However, there needs to be some signs of life along the ground floor of that parking garage.

Sooner rather than later would be so very nice.

Then the hiccups will subside.

Sports news

UVA declines invitation to visit White House … what gives?

The list is now up to three.

The University of Virginia won the NCAA men’s basketball championship with a stunning victory over Texas Tech University. Then the White House invited the Cavaliers to be feted by Donald Trump.

The Cavs’ response? No can do, Mr. President.

They now join the University of North Carolina and Villanova University in declining to take part in what most of us thought was a part of D.C. normalcy. Teams win national championships, then travel to the nation’s capital to be honored by the president of the United States.

That was until Donald Trump became president of the United States. Now we find the president politicizing these events, criticizing pro football players for kneeling during the playing of the National Anthem. He infuriates players, who then balk at coming to the White House. The Golden State Warriors this past year won the NBA title, chafed at going to the White House and then the president disinvited them.

Now the third straight men’s college basketball team has said “no thanks” to the White House, citing what school officials called “scheduling conflicts.” Sure thing, man.

When you think about it, what we’re seeing is an ongoing trend involving this president.

Donald and Melania Trump haven’t attended a Kennedy Center Honors event that pays tribute to artists who contribute to the world’s culture. The president refuses to attend the White House Correspondents Dinner, I presume because of his antipathy toward the “enemy of the American people.”

These once-pro forma events have become news in and of themselves because of the president’s clumsy relationships with national institutions.

So the drama continues.

The UVA Cavaliers won’t break bread with the president. I fully expect Donald Trump to say something inappropriate — if not downright stupid — in response to the NCAA men’s champs’ decision to stay away.

Weird.

local news

Letters give a look into the distant past

  

I have been engaging in some late-night reading of an extraordinary series of correspondence.

They are letters written by the woman pictured here. She is my mother, Mnostoula. The kids in the photo are my sister and me.

It’s instructive and always eye-opening if you get the chance to see a side of your elders back before they became your elders. The letters I have been reading offer an astonishing glimpse into my mother’s past and, in its way, into my own past as well.

I find myself smiling and reading with slack-jawed amazement at the woman she was so very young.

Mom and Dad were married in August 1946 and the earliest letters are written by Mom to the younger of her two brothers. She wrote them while she and Dad were on their honeymoon. They were married in Portland, Ore., and drove to San Francisco and then to Los Angeles to cavort and carry on the way newlyweds do.

All the letters, 18 of them, were sent to my uncle Jim. They speak to a whole array of experiences that Mom and Dad were enjoying as they began their life together.

The letters, which my uncle gave to me some years ago, end in June 1948, more than a year before I was born.

They simply amaze me to the max.

Mom’s perfect penmanship tells of her meeting up — on her honeymoon, no less — with old friends from Portland who decided to travel south to meet up with the newlyweds. I shake my head a bit at that, remembering my own honeymoon and enjoying the time my bride and I had all to ourselves.

There is another astounding observation she made while walking through downtown San Francisco. Remember that this was in 1946 and Mom told her brother about seeing “all the queers” on the street. She writes about busting out laughing at the sight of what I presume was a significant gay population in the City By the Bay.

She complains about her other brother who, according to Mom, didn’t bother to wish their own mother a happy Mother’s Day.

Most of the material is routine. I suppose one could be bored reading it, unless you’re a descendant of the individual whose correspondence reveals a side of herself that wasn’t always apparent when you’re growing up.

That would be me. I didn’t know much about my mother life prior to her marriage and motherhood, although she did confide in me a time or two about her zest for life when she was a young woman just coming of age.

I feel compelled to share this message with you as a reminder that we all have histories. We all have stories. I have taken a glimpse into my own past and been given the opportunity to read a bit of my dear mother’s story.

Mom was dealt a bad hand in life. Mom and Dad didn’t get to grow old. Mom died at 61 of Alzheimer’s complications. Dad died at 59 in a boating accident. That all happened a long time ago.

Seeing this history unfold from Mom’s own hand, though, reveals a snapshot at who she was and who wanted to become.

If you have a chance to read your elders’ thoughts from back before they became your elders, take it. It’s rewarding beyond measure.