Monthly Archives: June 2019

national news

Not all government officials view the press as ‘enemy’

Donald Trump’s vendetta against the media, his spiteful message of the media allegedly being the “enemy of the people,” hasn’t filtered down to all levels of government.

And that, I want to declare, is a very good thing.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel this week was honored by a county commission for its reporting on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Fla.

A former colleague and a friend was part of the team that collected the Pulitzer Prize for its reporting and commentary on the massacre that erupted on Valentine’s Day, 2018. The Sun-Sentinel walked away with the highest honor given by the Pulitzer board: the award for Meritorious Public Service.

Today, the Broward County Board of Commissioners took time to honor the Sun-Sentinel for the work it did reporting on the hideous eruption of gun violence.

My friend, Rosemary Goudreau O’Hara (she’s in the center of the picture linked to this post), called attention to the recognition today on her Facebook page. The Broward County Board of Commissioners declared today to be Sun-Sentinel Day in Broward County and gave the newspaper’s team a plaque to commemorate it.

This is precisely the kind of recognition that many in journalism appreciate beyond measure. It is heartening to me, even though I sit in a faraway peanut gallery seat, to realize that government officials are able to give the media the bouquet they deserve.

That’s what happened in Broward County, Fla.

As O’Hara said today on her Facebook post: This was such a nice thing to do. It’s unusual, too, for government to applaud the Fourth Estate for watchdogging government, especially when everybody doesn’t like the coverage. With our president calling the media the enemy of the people, it means a great deal that the Broward County Commission today recognized the South Florida Sun Sentinel for our reporting on the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. It’s Sun Sentinel Day in Broward!

These elected county officials have demonstrated their understanding that a free, unfettered and aggressive press is essential to the society we cherish.

Congratulations to the Sun-Sentinel staff and many thanks to a county government board for giving that staff the honor it has earned.

International news

POTUS said this in response to CIA agent death?

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Donald Trump apparently, if I understand all of this correctly, defended North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un against reports that he had his half-brother killed because the half-bro was a CIA agent working for the United States of America.

Trump said this in response to a question about the reported murder of Kim’s kin. Read it perhaps you can make sense of it, as reported by The Atlantic:

“I see that, and I just received a beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un,” Trump said. “I think the relationship is very well, but I appreciated the letter. I saw the information about the CIA with regard to his brother or half brother, and I would tell him that would not happen under my auspices. I wouldn’t let that happen under my auspices. I just received a beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un.”

Kim’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, reportedly was murdered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, by agents who poisoned him in 2017 with nerve gas. This isn’t the first time Kim Jong Un has been associated with brutal murders of family members. In Trump’s world, though, it appears to be OK, given that the president is trying to build a relationship with the murderous dictator.

I’m just wondering what in the world Trump means that such an act “would not happen under my auspices. I wouldn’t let that happen under my auspices.”

But he got that “beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un.”

Is this man, our president, in possession of his faculties?

national news

POTUS is an ‘existential threat’ to the country he governs?

Just wondering: When have you ever heard someone describe the president of the United States as an “existential threat” to the very nation he was elected govern?

Never? Maybe once in an epochal age? Yeah, maybe.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, one of many Democrats seeking to succeed Donald Trump as president, has called Trump such a threat to the nation.

He is touring Iowa, that key caucus state that kicks off the presidential campaign. He is talking about Trump’s politics of fear and division; he is warning us about Trump’s attacks on American institutions, such as the media.

He is going straight after Donald Trump’s character, or lack of character. He is calling the president a criminal and someone who cannot be trusted to represent this nation firmly on the world stage.

Yes, that is how I would describe the president as well.

Those elements comprise an existential threat to the very nation that somehow, against all reason and odds, elected him to the most noble office in the land.

Still, the hear such a description coming from a major candidate for that office call the incumbent an “existential threat” takes this discussion to a level I do not recognize.

It’s only going to get stranger.

national news

Trump turns ‘fealty’ into a litmus test for GOP candidates

So … just how weird has the political climate gotten in the Age of Donald John Trump?

U.S. Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, the lone Republican (so far) to call for the president’s impeachment, has just quit the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus. It’s not that Amash doesn’t fit the conservative mold for the Freedom Caucus. It’s because he doesn’t bow at the sound of Donald Trump’s name.

As Politico reports: Amash “faces a far more uncertain political future in the age of Trump, in which fealty to the president has often become a litmus test for the GOP.”

But here’s what I don’t quite grasp. Trump isn’t a true-blue Republican. His trade tariffs send “establishment Republicans” into orbit. The president has developed a classic “protectionist” trade policy that used to be popular among pro-union political progressives. Trump has slathered this policy under a coating of “putting America first,” which played well on the 2016 campaign trail. He was able to sucker enough voters to get him elected.

Trump has gone soft on Russia, the traditional adversary of U.S. geopolitical interests and the bogeyman among Republicans.

Donald Trump upset the political equation in a major way three years ago just by winning the presidency. Now he has captured the GOP and turned it into something few of us recognize.

Justin Amash once was thought to be a traditional libertarian conservative. He’s now an outlier among the GOP. Why? Because he cannot stand by idly while the president obstructs justice.

Go figure.

media news

Media morphing continues in the Panhandle

There might be something that I am unable to grasp. If so, then I’ll take ownership of my ignorance. Still, I have to wonder out loud what is happening to the editorial voice of a newspaper that once was a major part of my professional life.

The Amarillo Globe-News — where I worked for nearly 18 years before I resigned in August 2012 — has published yet another editorial praising the exploits of a Lubbock-based institution, the Texas Tech University men’s track and field team.

This editorial, like so many other such commentaries published under the Amarillo Globe-News masthead, seems to affirm what I believe is happening to local journalism in Amarillo: It is melding into some form of regional editorial voice.

Check out the editorial here.

I don’t know exactly how this is going to play out, but the signs are pointing toward a continued diminution of local editorial clout within a news outlet — the Globe-News — that once prided itself on being the voice of Amarillo and surrounding communities.

The “regional publisher” resides in Lubbock, as does the “regional director of commentary.” The “regional executive editor” lives in Amarillo. But all three of these fine individuals seek to spend time in the “other” communities they serve. Still, the editorial page, where I was able to leave something of an imprint during my years in Amarillo, appears to be looking way past the needs of the community and is commenting — as it is doing today — on the exploits of young men associated with a top-tier university headquartered 120 miles south of the Panhandle’s unofficial “capital city.”

Is it because the director of commentary is a Tech grad? Or because he once worked at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, which is the other newspaper owned by Gatehouse Media?

I am a bit reluctant to be overly critical of this ongoing emphasis on Lubbock, given that I no longer live in Amarillo. Still, during the 20-plus years I lived in the Panhandle, I was able to discern a clear difference in concerns between the residents of both Amarillo and Lubbock. Each city has unique traits that define it. Their residents have unique concerns that have next to nothing to do with their regional neighbors.

I understand that Amarillo is chock full of Red Raider loyalists and, just maybe, they’re all worked up over the national championship won by Tech’s men’s track team. But … what percentage of them comprise what is left of the Globe-News readership?

OK. I’m done venting on this matter. Maybe I should just let it go. Maybe I should concern myself with what is happening closer to my new home. It’s just that after investing so much emotional capital commenting on the affairs of a community I grew to love, it is hard for me to watch the Globe-News’s editorial influence on its community continue to dwindle.

national news

Always good to separate the person from the institution

Maybe I have learned how to “compartmentalize” the way Bill Clinton demonstrated he was able to do during his eight years as president of the United States, from 1993 to 2001.

President Clinton taught us how he was able to set aside his political opponents’ personal loathing for him — and work with them anyway. He was able to put his own personal loathing for individuals into, um, compartments while doing business on behalf of the public.

So it is that form of compartmentalization that I am able to look at the presidency without much regard for the individual who inhabits the office in the moment. Donald Trump is president of the United States. I recently posted a blog item that mentioned how thrilled I was to see the White House with my wife, niece and nephew a couple of years ago. It didn’t matter to me in the moment that Donald Trump is the person who has taken up residence in that magnificent residence.

Later in the day after we stood outside the White House, we happened to see Marine One, the helicopter carrying the president flying overhead. We were in Georgetown at that moment and the chopper was en route to the White House; I don’t remember where the president had been, but he was returning to “my house” where he lives with his wife and youngest son. And, yes, it was a thrill to see the helicopter, too!

My point here is to reiterate that my respect for the presidency and all the trappings of that office are not diminished by the individual who seemingly seeks to sully it. All he does is shame himself.

The office and the institution of the presidency is too damn big even for Donald J. Trump to do permanent damage.

That “compartmentalization” thing comes in handy. Don’t you think?

environmental news

Wow! That’s all one can say about that storm

This picture came from the Washington Post’s website, which leads me to believe it’s the real thing. It’s no Photoshop product, or the result of some other photographic trickery.

It is a picture of what occurred over Dallas, Texas, yesterday. The storm produced high wind, heavy rain and it knocked over a construction crane in the city’s downtown district.

They call this phenomenon a “microburst.” It was deadly, indeed. One person died when the crane crashed into a building, cutting the structure virtually in two.

I got an inquiry from a friend downstate who asked if had experienced any of that mayhem. I told her “no,” and noted that we got a bit of rain and a little bit of wind in Princeton, which is about 40 or so miles north of Dallas.

I have heard it said about Texas weather — whether it’s on the Gulf Coast or in the Panhandle, where we have lived during our 35 years in Texas — that “If you don’t like the weather, just wait 15 minutes …” I also have heard it said of the Panhandle that “You can experience all the seasons of the year in just a matter of minutes.”

Let it also be said of North Texas, where we now call home, that meteorological violence can erupt just on the other side of our neighborhood.

Storms such as the one that roared Sunday over downtown Dallas can produce magnificent images … but they aren’t to be trifled with.

Wow!

national news

Dean testimony provides a preview of what we might see

John Dean sat before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee today to offer the panel some historical context. He wasn’t there as a “fact witness” with specific knowledge of the matters involving Donald Trump’s conduct during the most recent presidential campaign.

However, he was there to provide some historical perspective gleaned from his role as White House counsel during the Watergate scandal of 1973-74.

I agree that Dean was a dubious “expert,” given his own culpability in the crimes committed during President Nixon’s administration.

However, we might have gotten a preview of what we could expect if the House Judiciary panel decides to launch a full-blown impeaching proceeding against Donald Trump.

What might that include? It might — indeed, it likely will — include Republicans on the panel who will seek to denigrate the credibility of every Trump critic who seeks to make the case for impeaching the president.

We heard it today from GOP members who sought to ridicule Dean’s appearance. By “ridicule,” I mean to suggest that they inferred that since Dean wasn’t there to discuss the “facts” of the Trump matter, they would ask him questions about subjects that had nothing to do with the issues at hand. They sought to suggest that as a convicted felon who lost his law license he had no credibility on anything.

Did we hear anyone of the GOP members defending Donald Trump’s character? Did they speak to the president’s honesty, his integrity, his courage, his commitment to public service?

Umm. I didn’t hear it. Did you?

What I heard was an effort to denigrate, disparage and disrespect a witness who took an oath to tell those members of Congress the truth.

I believe it’s good to keep this conduct in mind if the House Judiciary Committee decides to launch impeachment proceedings yet again.

environmental news

Wanting climate change to get a full hearing in 2020

Climate change is not the “hoax” that Donald Trump says it is.

Therefore, I want the issue to take center stage during the 2020 presidential election campaign. I keep seeing data that tell us about warming global temperatures, shrinking ice caps, rising sea levels, coastal communities facing an existential danger.

Yet the president does nothing about any of it. He says he wants to boost fossil fuel production, which means an increase in carbon emissions that scientists blame for the warming atmosphere.

Most of the Democrats running for president tell us they subscribe to the notion that climate change poses a legitimate national emergency and is a threat to our national security. I happen to believe them.

I also want there to be commitments — ironclad, cast in stone, signed in blood if need be — that the United States is going to resume its investment in alternative energy sources.

Indeed, one of the Democratic candidates — South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg — noted the other day that such investment could produce literally thousands if not millions of jobs for Americans. Thus, such an emphasis not only would save the planet from its self-destruction, but it also would Americans to work.

Hmm. How’s that for “putting America first”?

It works for me.

If you want to declare a national emergency, then let’s turn away from this nonsense about migrants seeking entry into this country. The national emergency exists in the changing climate that threatens the entire planet.

national news

White House still signifies dignity, power and majesty

I have made no secret on this blog about my intense loathing of the man who lives in the big ol’ house behind us in this picture.

Two years ago, my wife and I ventured to Washington, D.C., to visit the two young folks in this picture: our niece Andrea and her husband Loren. They showed us a marvelous time in the few days we spent in the nation’s capital.

Our walking tour took us to the White House. We stood on Pennsylvania Avenue and gazed at the place along with other turistas who were gathered along the fence.

It dawned on me in the moment and it occurs to me now that despite the intense political differences one might have with the individual who sits in the Oval Office, the presidency is far bigger, far more important than the knucklehead who serves in the office.

The building is a lasting symbol of the nation and its greatness.

To be crystal clear, Donald Trump never will earn my support. I didn’t vote for him in 2016. He won’t get my vote in 2020. However, my dislike for him as an individual and what he represents does not diminish for one instant, doesn’t take away any bit of love I have for my country or the respect I continue to hold for the office of the presidency.

I suppose that is why I want my president to be better than the rest of us. I want the president to represent us with dignity, class, grace, even a bit of elegance.

I want that individual to be worthy of taking up residence in that beautiful structure. After all, it is our house. Yours and mine.

Thus, it was a thrill to lay eyes on it two years ago.