Monthly Archives: June 2019

national news

Could we have a 2016 election result repeat itself in 2020?

1 Comment

I was chatting with a friend this afternoon about the 2020 presidential election when a horrifying thought occurred to me.

It is that we well might see a repeat of the 2016 election in which the winner of the contest receives fewer votes than his foe but manages to win just enough Electoral College votes to be declared the winner.

Yep, I refer to Donald John Trump possibly being re-elected in that manner. Here’s what my friend and I didn’t discuss today: Trump and whoever he faces might have an even larger ballot differential than Trump had against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton garnered nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, but lost the election when the carnival barker corralled 304 electoral votes; he needed 270 to win.

Suppose for a minute that Trump is able to squeak out another Electoral College win in 2020. He could lose, say, Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin — maybe all three — and still eke out just enough electoral votes to win another four years in the White House. Trump won those Rust Belt states against Clinton, which was critical to his winning the presidency.

Such a result — the second consecutive such result and the third outcome in the past six presidential elections — could doom the Electoral College. That would produce the other poor consequence of an election result that might occur in November 2020.

However, a rising tide against the Electoral College would be a distant second to the notion of Donald Trump being re-elected.

I shudder at the thought.

International news

Memo to AOC: Stop using ‘concentration camp’ reference

Read my lips, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: When you use the words “concentration camps,” it is quite easy for others to equate that terminology with what the Nazis did in Europe prior to and during World War II.

I get that you are a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. You represent a constituency that must believe what you say. However, even though you are a raw rookie congresswoman from New York City, your words have this way of resonating around the country.

Thus, I want to caution you about equating our detention of illegal immigrants on our southern border to “concentration camps.”

I understand your reaction to critics who suggest you are equating those detention camps along our Mexico border with “death camps.” I heard you say that death camps aren’t the same as concentration camps.

However, it is dangerously close to making that death camp equation.

There can be no way in the world that we can attach any moral equivalence to what we’re doing to anything approaching what the Nazis did in committing the 20th century’s worst crimes against humanity.

Now, I say this as someone who wants to support you, Rep AOC. However, your meteoric rise to the top of our public visibility is annoying. I prefer member of Congress earn their spurs before they appear before me every single day.

I also get that your ubiquitous presence on TV and in print isn’t your fault. It’s the fault of the media that are looking for stars. They have found one in you.

But take this bit of unsolicited advice: Just because the media are anxious to quote you doesn’t give you license to say things that your elders find offensive.

I don’t like the detention centers on our border any more than you do. However, I bristle at any notion that we are running “concentration camps” that to my eyes and ears reminds me too much of what the Nazis did during that dark and sinister time.

Be circumspect, Rep. AOC.

local news, State news

Panhandle no longer is a Texas ‘step-child’

There once was a Texas Panhandle state representative who semi-seriously thought the Panhandle should separate itself from the rest of the state because, he groused, state government ignores the region.

That state rep was David Swinford, a Dumas Republican first elected to office in 1990. I asked him about that notion when I first met him in 1995 and he didn’t exactly deny it.

Well, Swinford has retired from the Legislature. And to its credit, the legislative body has restored faith in many in the Panhandle. How? By appropriating enough money — $17 million — to build a school of veterinary medicine in Amarillo.

This is great news for the region. A lot of folks are taking credit for ensuring the Legislature made this event a reality.

The Texas Tech University System is going to build the vet school, the second one in Texas. The first vet school is run by the Texas A&M University System. Aggieland opposed Tech’s initiative. Tech wasn’t going to be denied. It lined up plenty of political backing in the Panhandle and the South Plains.

Amarillo Matters, a political action committee formed a couple of years ago, is one organization that is taking credit for pushing the Legislature to act. Amarillo Matters said this on its website:

“Not only does the budget include startup funding for the vet school, but it also includes a directive for Texas Tech to move forward developing the school,” Amarillo Matters President Jason Herrick said. “This is great news for Amarillo, the Texas Panhandle and South Plains, and our state as a whole.” The school will help meet the growing need for large animal and rural veterinarians across the state. It will also increase the opportunities for Texas students to further their education without leaving the state.

“Legislative approval of the Texas Tech veterinary school is a watershed event for West Texas, the Texas Panhandle, and all of Texas,” former Texas Tech University System Chancellor Bob Duncan said. “This culminates years of hard work by literally hundreds of individuals who recognized the unmet demand for rural and large animal veterinarians throughout our state,” Duncan added.

Read the rest of Amarillo Matters’ post here.

Here’s my essential point: State government has not ignored the Panhandle. Yet one hears the occasional gripe from those who think it still does. Let’s lose the attitude, my former Panhandle neighbors. The Panhandle has plenty of legislative clout and it used it effectively for the benefit of the delegation’s constituents.

I also doubt that my friend David Swinford is among the soreheads.

State news

Texas might be tossed onto the political battlefield

I have some good news — depending on your point of view — about Texas’s short- and immediate-term political future.

The state might become a “battleground state” in the 2020 presidential election. Do you know what that means? It means the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees and their running mates are going to spend lots of time here campaigning for votes.

Why is that a big deal? It’s big because I happen to be one voter who prefers to hear candidates up close.

Texas hasn’t been a battleground state for several presidential election cycles. Republicans have owned the results since 1976, when the last Democrat — Jimmy Carter — won the state’s electoral votes.

A new poll by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune says about 50 percent of Texans want someone other than Donald Trump to win the election next year. Of the Democrats running for the White House, former VP Joe Biden is leading; former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke also is polling well.

Here is an important caveat: These polls are practically useless this far from an election. People’s minds change. Candidates have ways of appealing/pandering to those on the fence.

But I’m going to hang on to the hope that Texas becomes a battleground state in 2020. Republicans have taken the state for granted; Democrats who have toiled in the wilderness haven’t bothered with Texas.

Is this the election cycle it changes? Oh, I hope so.

media news

Yep, it’s ‘Anybody But Trump in 2020’

I believe the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel is on to something with its declared intent to support whomever the Democratic Party nominates in the upcoming campaign for the presidency of the United States.

The Twitter hashtag #AnybodyButTrump2020 is getting a lot of views out there. I understand it’s the fifth most tweeted hashtag in the Twitter universe.

Whatever …

I saw the editorial Tuesday as the president was preparing to deliver his official re-election kickoff speech in central Florida. I was struck by the same thing that has amazed so many media watchers: How can the newspaper make such a declaration so early in the electoral process?

According to the Sentinel’s editorial, it’s easy: “After 2 1/2 years we’ve seen enough” of Donald Trump, the paper wrote. “Enough of the chaos, the division, the schoolyard insults, the self-aggrandizement, the corruption and especially the lies,” the Sentinel opined.

How many ways can I endorse the Sentinel’s views on the president. And they come from a newspaper with a long history of endorsing Republicans for president (mostly).

I suppose the variation comes because Trump only masquerades as a Republican. He belongs to a party that has been historically suspicious of Russian leaders. The GOP has long been a champion of free trade and a staunch foe of economic protectionism. Indeed, Republicans helped a Democratic president enact landmark civil rights and voting rights laws in the 1960s; does anyone believe Donald Trump stands for those principles today?

The lying is the serious deal breaker for the Sentinel. The paper said it isn’t surprised that Trump would lie. It is appalled at the frequency and the severity of the lies.

They have set a remarkable template for how other media organizations might consider when they deliberate over whom to recommend for the presidency.

For good measure, I want to share once again the Sentinel’s editorial with this link.

I now want to thank the Orlando Sentinel editorial board for speaking the truth about the charlatan who is masquerading as our head of state. May the newspaper’s words resonate across the land.

local news

Here is the ‘enemy of the people’

Take a look at this picture. What you see in this image is the enemy of the people. This is an example of the actual enemy of decent Americans who fear for their lives when faced with monsters such as this.

However, in the mind of Donald Trump, the fellow who snapped this picture — a Dallas Morning News photojournalist named Tom Fox — is the “enemy” he detests.

I won’t identify the shooter. He is dead, killed by federal security officers who answered the call when shots rang out Monday morning at the Earle Cabell Federal Courthouse in downtown Dallas.

Fox was there, too. He hid behind a wall while this madman was pouring bullets into the courthouse. He managed to poke himself and his camera out long enough to snap this memorable image of the gunman.

I just feel compelled to point out that Tom Fox is a hero. He did his job of chronicling the news of the moment with cool professionalism; his picture now will be logged into the nation’s historical archive.

As for the shooter, he represented the worst in our society. He is the enemy we should fear. The fellow who snapped the image should be hailed as a hero.

2016 election, Donald Trump, national news

POTUS launches re-election bid with … a return to old gripes

That was some re-election relaunch by the president of the United States.

Donald Trump ventured to Orlando, Fla., to launch his bid officially for a second term in the White House. Did he unveil any grand new proposals? Did he provide a vision for the future? Did he tell us where he wants to lead the country?

Umm. That would no on all three counts.

Indeed, he managed to spend about 90 seconds crowing about an economy he has called the best in the nation’s history.

Then he returned to plenty of familiar turf. He brought up Hillary Clinton’s name dozens of times; yes, that Hillary Clinton, the Democrat he defeated in the 2016 presidential election.

He ripped into the “Democrat Party,” saying it wants to destroy the nation “as we know it.”

Let’s not forget the “fake news” media, the journalists he calls the “enemy of the people.” They received presidential broadsides as well from the lecturn in Orlando.

There you go. The president is seemingly set to rely on the same themes that got him elected in the first place in his quest for a second term in the White House.

There will be more name-calling, more insults, more invective, more gloom and doom, more baseless boasting, more lies, more self-aggrandizement.

Who is the president’s audience? It’s his base, the 41 or so percent of Americans who hang on his every misstatement, every lie. They don’t care that he doesn’t know how to behave in public. They give him a pass on the insults he has hurled at a reporter with a serious physical disability, or his admitted groping of women, or the hush money he paid to a porn star with whom he had a fling some years ago.

He is “making America great again.” How is he doing that? I guess the insults he hurls at allies is one way.

Good grief! This is the man who wants another four years in the nation’s highest and most venerated public office?

Give me strength.

I’ll leave it to Jeff Greenfield, the veteran broadcast journalist and commentator who’s seen a few of these re-election speeches over the years. Take it away, sir.

Read Greenfield’s take here.

Greenfield concludes with this: And if you were looking for a single grace note, a single appeal to the better angels of our nature, a single note of humility, a single note of simple ordinary decency … well, just go to YouTube and spend a few minutes with Ronald Reagan.

I believe I will do that.

national news

Where is the vetting, Mr. President?

Patrick Shanahan’s withdrawal from consideration to be defense secretary brings to the fore the issue of whether he was vetted properly before Donald Trump appointed him to be acting secretary of defense.

The president had said he wanted Shanahan to be confirmed for the permanent job … except that he had some serious, egregious baggage.

It turns out Shanahan was accused of beating the daylights out of his then-wife in 2010.

The media have reported in just recent hours about Shanahan’s history. It makes a lot of us wonder: Is there any vetting going on in the West Wing of the White House?

I have to wonder how in the world the president puts forth an individual who has something so grievous in his background. Does anyone within the White House personnel operation understand that these kinds of things cannot be kept secret? Not ever?

This isn’t the first incidence of senior officials being “outed” over instances of domestic abuse.

local news

Puppy Tales, Part 72: Running afoul with a neighbor

Well, this is a “life experience” I didn’t anticipate commenting on in this blog. But I will anyway.

My wife and I routinely take Toby the Puppy on walks through our neighborhood. We have the routine down pat. We put his harness on him and grab a small plastic “poopy bag” — or maybe two. We use the bag to, um, pick up after Toby in the event he needs to relieve himself.

We did all of that this evening. We strolled west along our street, then south along a short street, then headed east on a street parallel to our own.

Toby then had to go. So … he did. I stooped over with the bag and picked up his “calling card.”

That’s when the sh** kinda/sorta hit the fan — if you will please pardon the pun.

The gentleman who owns the house that sits on the yard told us that we were standing on “private property.” My first reaction was that I thought he was making some sort of joke. He wasn’t. He was angry that Toby pooped on his lawn.

I told the fellow that I picked it up. His yard was clean. The fellow’s anger wasn’t assuaged. He said “that doesn’t matter. You need to teach him not to do that.”

Huh? At that point, we walked away. We deposited the soiled poopy bag in the trash receptacle down the street.

I am unaware of any training techniques one can use to “teach” a dog not to do what comes naturally to a pooch. I’ve always figured that the best option is to be ready to pick up after a dog — which we do without fail.

I think I’ll add this little caveat to the fellow who got angry with Toby the Puppy: Our un-neighborly neighbor spoke in what sounded to my ear like an East Coast accent, quite possibly from, say, the New York area.

Hey, I’m not casting aspersions on those who hail from that part of the country. I’m just sayin’ … man.

national security

Trump makes ‘acting’ more fashionable?

Donald Trump’s administration has a revolving door the likes of which is virtually unprecedented in presidential history.

The nation’s acting defense secretary has pulled out. Patrick Shanahan has decided he doesn’t want to be considered for a permanent appointment.

Hey, no biggie, says the president. He thanked Shanahan for doing a “great job.” Now he’s got to look for another defense boss.

But the president who boasts about his administration being a “fine-tuned machine” has a lot of spots to fill. If he chooses to fill them.

According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Definitive listings of acting officials in Trump’s and other administrations are hard to come by because no agency keeps overall records. Yet Christina Kinane, an incoming political science professor at Yale, compiled data in her doctoral dissertation, “Control Without Confirmation: The Politics of Vacancies in Presidential Appointments.”

Kinane found that from 1977 through mid-April of this year — from the administration of President Jimmy Carter through the first half of Trump’s — 266 individuals held Cabinet posts. Seventy-nine of them held their jobs on an acting basis, or 3 in 10.

Under Trump, 22 of the 42 people in top Cabinet jobs have been acting, or just over half.

And though Trump’s presidency has spanned less than 5% of the years covered, his administration accounts for more than 27% of the acting officials tallied. Kinane’s figures include holdovers from previous administrations, some of whom serve for just days.

The bottom line is that Trump either cannot find qualified individuals to fill these posts on permanent bases, or he simply chooses not to take the time required to vet them properly.

It’s fair to wonder whether the nation is served well by so many “acting” top-level officials. How can they make serious administrative policy decisions? How does their staff take them totally seriously? In posts involving foreign policy, how do these interim appointments play in foreign capitals? How do our allies trust fully that these acting officials speak for the United States?

Trump has said he “likes” having acting top officials, saying something weird about how it gives him “flexibility.”

I happen to believe that the flexibility Trump relishes also breeds uncertainty. And confusion and chaos.

Trump promised to surround himself with the “best people.” He said he knows the “best words.” That he went to the “best schools.”

He also said that “I, alone can fix” the damage purportedly done to the country. Donald Trump’s inability or unwillingness to fill these posts might be good for his ego, but profoundly bad for the country.