Monthly Archives: July 2019

local news, Sports news

Naming a baseball team requires top-notch marketing skill

Just as I have given up making political predictions, I am done questioning the wisdom of marketing gurus who study the ins and outs of delivering brand names that catch the public’s attention.

I once questioned the wisdom of all that hotel construction in Amarillo. A friend of mine at the Convention and Visitors Council told me not to worry; the hotels will be do just fine. Turns out my friend was correct.

So, with that I will declare my belief in the marketers who settled on the name of the city’s minor-league baseball franchise. The Sod Poodles are playing baseball before good crowds at Hodgetown.

What’s more the team’s name has become the talk of the town, the Texas League communities where they play when they’re not at home and in baseball publications all over the nation.

Hey, weren’t the Sod Poodles named the top minor-league nickname in the country? Well, they were, although we can debate until we run out of breath about the validity of the survey.

Whatever, the Sod Poodles turned out to be a name that had to grow on some of us … such as me. I hate the name when I first saw it on the list of finalist names that the Elmore Group, the franchise owner, revealed to the public.

They mentioned something about Sod Poodles being some sort of old-time name for prairie dogs. Sure thing, dudes. Whatever you say.

The name, though, has stuck. It has become part of the franchise’s identity, which likely is what the Elmore Group and its marketing geniuses had in mind from the get-go.

That’s why they get paid the big bucks and shmucks like me are sitting in the peanut gallery. I live now in a community next to one of the teams that comprise the Texas League along with the Sod Poodles. They play hardball in Frisco. They’re called the Frisco Roughriders, which to my ear sounds almost milquetoast compared to the name given their rivals in Amarillo.

Whatever, my view from afar tells me that the Elmore Group marketers knew what they were doing.

I’ll just keep my marketing thoughts to myself and enjoy watching the community reap the benefits of knowledge from the experts.

national news

Waiting for Mueller to answer The Question

House Judiciary and Intelligence committee Democrats are preparing to quiz the former special counsel.

As are committee Republicans, although I am certain their questions will seek to take Robert Mueller III into an entirely different direction.

Mueller will sit before the panels for a good bit of the day tomorrow. He clearly is a reluctant witness. However, I am waiting for him to answer The Question, which well might determine whether the House of Representatives pulls the trigger on impeachment proceedings against Donald John Trump.

It goes something like this: Did the president of the United States commit crimes and would he have been indicted by Mueller’s legal team had he been just a private citizen?

To my mind, a “yes” to either or both of those questions would pave the way for the House to march forward.

Let me toss in another one for good measure: Did you “clear” the president of collusion with Russian hackers or of obstructing justice?

If the president committed a crime, then how in the name of juris prudence does he dodge impeachment and how does the president not be held accountable for his actions as a candidate for office and as the holder of the nation’s highest and most exalted public office?

Sounds simple, right? It ain’t. I get that.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has expressed reluctance about impeachment. She doesn’t want the House to essentially “indict” the president only to have the Senate acquit him in a trial.

That is where Robert Mueller steps up. This is where he is able to educate us all about what he found over the course of his 22-month investigation. Sure, he filed that 448-page report. I haven’t read it. It’s not my job. I have read enough of it, though, to understand what he concluded and why he drew those conclusions.

I do not want House Republicans to get away with tarring this good man’s reputation. Mueller took on this task amid high praise for the career of public service to which he dedicated himself. He is a former FBI director, a combat Marine, a Vietnam War hero, a man of privilege who entered public service.

I don’t know the man, but there is nothing in his background that suggests he is how many Republicans — including Donald Trump — have portrayed him.

Moreover, I want him to answer The Question forthrightly.

Then, depending on what he says, we’ll see the character of our elected representatives revealed fully.

State news

Is ex-state Sen. Davis, um, a carpetbagger?

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I was a bit surprised to hear that former Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, who used to represent Fort Worth and Tarrant County in the Legislature, is running for a congressional seat … way down yonder in San Antonio. 

She wants to run in the fall of 2020 against Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, who damn near got beat in 2018 as Texas Democrats became energized by the candidacy of Beto O’Rourke in his race against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. Roy ran for he seat vacated when Lamar Smith decided against running for re-election.

I believe Wendy Davis is a fine public servant. She is smart, well-educated, capable and might prove to be a lightning-quick study on the issues pertaining to the 21st Congressional District. I don’t know much about Roy, other than he is a solid Donald Trump sycophant, er, supporter. Any effort to remove someone of that ilk is OK with me.

But I do wonder whether Davis’s opportunism isn’t revealing itself.

She burst on the national scene in 2013 when she led a Democratic filibuster in the Legislature against a stringent anti-abortion bill that eventually got passed by the Senate and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott. She then ran for governor the following year and got trounced by the incumbent.

Davis earned her political chops, though, by representing the Fort Worth area. I am now wondering if she isn’t opening herself up to critics who could suggest that she’s merely looking for a public office to occupy, so she found a potentially vulnerable Republican a good distance away from her home.

Politicians have been called “carpetbaggers” by employing that kind of tactic. I know Davis is not the first pol to do such a thing. She won’t be the last one, either.

Hey, Davis is a grownup. She likely is well aware of what lies ahead for her, presuming she wins the Democratic primary. I’m just looking ahead to what could become a bruising, bitter and bellicose battle for power in the U.S. House of Representatives.

International news

Britain selects Boris Johnson as PM? This is just great!

As if the world wasn’t unsettled enough with Donald John Trump serving as head of government — and head of state — of the world’s most powerful nation.

Now the planet gets to watch another buffoon take control of another great power’s government. That’s right, Great Britain’s Parliament has selected Boris Johnson to lead the Conservative Party, which means Johnson gets to become prime minister.

Johnson is as much of a goofball/fruitcake/buffoon as his good pal, Trump. What’s more, he even sports what one must define as a ridiculous head of hair, again just like Trump.

But beyond all the personal stuff, we have this matter of the incoming prime minister spouting intemperate utterances. He wants to fast track Britain’s departure from the European Union, which many of us wish wouldn’t occur in the first place.

Johnson succeeds Teresa May as prime minister. Sure, she has her problems, but at least she knows how conduct herself with decorum on the world stage. Boris Johnson, on the other hand, well … once again, he reminds me of the president of the United States.

Trump and Johnson. Oh, my. These two were made for each other.

local news

Recalling one tough ‘S.O.B.’ and how he would react to Trump

I have been thinking a good bit in recent days of my former congressman, arguably the meanest, most irascible, most ferocious partisan ever to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The late Jack Brooks was that man. He called himself Sweet Old Brooks. You get how the initials spell out and how they likely refer to their more, um, colloquial meaning.

Brooks — who represented the Golden Triangle of Texas from 1953 until 1995 — was one mean dude. It is no stretch to say that he hated Republicans. He served on the House Judiciary Committee that approved articles of impeachment against President Nixon in 1974. I read a fascinating Politico piece recently that told how Brooks actually authored the articles to ensure they were written with unassailable precision.

How would Sweet Old Brooks react to what we’re debating today?

I truly believe in my gut that he would be calling for Trump’s head on the proverbial platter, or perhaps even some pertinent body parts as well, if you know what I mean.

Jack Brooks was one of many Texas proteges of the great House Speaker Sam Rayburn, who took other political fledglings under his wing. Men such as Lyndon Johnson and Jim Wright (another U.S. House speaker) owed their political success to the mentorship provided by Mr. Sam.

However, Brooks was wired differently than LBJ or Speaker Wright. President Johnson learned to work with Republicans, who helped him enact the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. He needed those Republicans to counter the opposition he was getting from southern Democrats who remained faithful to their segregationist past.

To be clear, Jack Brooks was not among those southern Democrats who resisted LBJ. He supported the president’s efforts in the House. A large part of his Southeast Texas constituency comprised African-Americans in Beaumont and Port Arthur.

Brooks, though, was among the toughest, meanest politicians I ever met. I do not recall in all the discussions I had with him that Brooks would offer unsolicited praise for Republican politicians. He considered President Reagan to be a dunce and a dolt.

How would he react to the conduct of the current Republican president? He would find a way to send Donald Trump packing. Of that I am absolutely certain.

He surely was an SOB, but he was our SOB.

national news

POTUS: Do as I say, not as I have done … for decades!

Oh, Mr. President, you just cannot stop tripping over yourself.

Your statement issued over the weekend that The Squad shouldn’t criticize the presidency, the nation, its policies flies directly in the face of your own personal history.

You tell the four Democratic congresswomen with whom you have been feuding that they need to quell their criticism. They shouldn’t speak ill of the government, you say. They shouldn’t speak out against our nation’s policies. You tell them, essentially, to keep their mouths shut.

Then you say they owe you, the nation and the rest of Americans and apology for all those criticisms they have leveled.

Are you serious, Mr. President?

What in the world did you do for decades? You did precisely the very thing you accuse Reps. Alyanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of doing?

Many of us remember the epithets you hurled at President Obama, at Hillary and Bill Clinton, various local officials at several levels of government. You have called previous presidents “stupid.” You have slung intensely personal insults at presidents and senior Cabinet officials.

Hey, Mr. President, I am just one of your constituents out here, but I think I speak for others who wonder the same thing. You, sir, lack the moral standing to instruct anyone else on how to conduct themselves as it regards those in power.

You have spent a lifetime leveling intense — and often deeply personal — criticism of others.

Now you expect four freshmen members of Congress to clam up just because you tell them to do so?

You cannot possibly be serious.

national news

Former Gov./Rep. Sanford proves that standards have lowered

Do you want proof that Donald Trump’s presidency has lowered the bar for the behavior of our elected officials?

Try this one on for size: Former South Carolina Gov. and U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford is considering challenging the president in the 2020 Republican Party primary.

You remember Sanford. This is the guy who when he was governor of South Carolina decided to travel to Argentina to cavort with a paramour, all the while instructing his gubernatorial staff to tell the media that he was “hiking along the Appalachian Trail.” Yes, the governor ordered his staff to lie about where he was and what he was doing.

The word got out. The media found Sanford in South America where he was taking a tumble with his girlfriend. Sanford’s wife, Jennifer, divorced him. He resigned the governorship, then ran for Congress, only to lose his re-election bid in 2018.

Now he is considering whether to challenge Trump’s re-election next year. Give me a break.

I only can presume that Sanford has calculated that if Donald Trump can be nominated and then elected president — given his own sordid history of lewd and lascivious behavior — then all bets are off.

Weird.

local news, State news

U.S. Senate race suddenly becomes quite the attraction

Well now. A serious legislative big hitter has just entered the contest for U.S. Senate. He hails from just down the road from my wife and me in Dallas.

Royce West, who’s served in the Texas Senate since 1993, wants to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. So he’s in.

Suddenly this contest has become a top-tier event, in my view.

West is one of the state’s leading legislative Democrats. He brings serious gravitas to the debate that will unfold over time.

Sure, first things first. West has to win the party’s nomination next spring. Democrats already have a crowded field in that primary. West’s entry only clutters it up, except that West has considerable standing among his legislative colleagues — on both sides of the aisle — not to mention a reputation as a serious and thoughtful individual.

West is a lawyer. No surprise there. As one of his legislative colleagues noted, he brings “a big voice and a big presence” to the contest. Big presence, indeed, given that West is, shall we say, an imposing physical specimen. He also brings considerable knowledge of the state.

Let me stipulate that I’ve known John Cornyn for a long time. He and I have a strictly professional relationship. I have considered it to be a good one at that. I got to know when he ran for Texas attorney general prior to his moving to the Senate. I like him personally, but am baffled — along with many other Americans — by his silence concerning Donald Trump’s behavior and the potential revelations concerning impeachable offenses.

How might this Senate race get even crazier? Consider this: Beto O’Rourke, who lost by just a little bit to Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, is flailing in his effort to run for president; he might decide to bail on the White House bid and make another run at the Senate seat occupied by John Cornyn.

Stay tuned, folks.

education news

A&M chancellor says Aggies are generous, too

Blogger’s Note: This post appeared originally on KETR-FM’s website. I am reposting on High Plains Blogger because I want readers of this blog to see it, too. 

The media and the University of Texas-Austin might have gotten a bit ahead of themselves in praising the flagship UT System campus officials’ decision to waive college tuition for students who come from families that fall under a certain income level.

That’s the word, at least from Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp.

Hmm. Is he right?

Sharp has penned a letter to the editor that I presume ran in several newspapers around the state to declare that the A&M System has been offering free college tuition for years. So, the UT-Austin initiative isn’t new, says Sharp.

Sharp noted in his letter that “Several of you have asked if Texas A&M University has plans for a tuition-free program for students from low-income families similar to what the University of Texas recently announced. In fact, Texas A&M University implemented virtually the … same program 10 years ago. The Texas A&M program is called Aggie Assurance. And since 2008, the program has allowed 33,447 undergraduate students from families earning less than $60,000 a year to attend college tuition free.”

The UT System recently announced plans to waive tuition for students whose families earn less than $65,000 annually. It drew high praise around the state. I used my own blog, High Plains Blogger, to speak well of the UT System’s efforts to make college more affordable. To be honest, I was unaware of the Aggie Assurance program to which Sharp has alluded in his letter.

Sharp added, “In addition, Texas A&M University System regents set aside $30 million additional dollars in 2018 to provide help for students of families who earn $100,000 or less or who are stricken with financial hardships such as losses during natural disasters, death of a breadwinner or some other calamity.

“This program, dubbed Regents’ Grants, was created after Hurricane Harvey and has helped hundreds of students who lost books, clothes and transportation, among other things.”

The program is available not just to Texas A&M flagship-campus students, but to all students within the A&M System, according to Sharp.

Are you paying attention, Texas A&M-Commerce students?

These programs are worth mentioning in the context of the 2020 presidential campaign that is becoming to obtain momentum. Several of the horde of Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination have talked openly about offering free college tuition for all public university students. The UT System as well as the A&M System are dipping into their substantial endowments to fund the assistance programs they are offering their students.

So, I suppose you could suggest that two of Texas’s major public university systems are ahead of the proverbial curve on that one.

I know what many critics have said about Texas’s commitment to public education, that it isn’t nearly as robust, progressive and proactive as it should be. I won’t debate all of that here.

However, I do want to commend the Texas A&M and the University of Texas systems for their efforts to provide quality public university education opportunities for students and their families who otherwise might be unable to shoulder the financial burden that such an education often brings with it.

national news

Then and now: Clinton and Trump

First, I’ll stipulate that I agree with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to proceed with impeaching Donald J. Trump, at least for the time being.

She knows the political consequences can be difficult to overcome if such an event were to occur. The divisions would be deep. An acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate could be devastating for the country.

Republicans are standing behind the president. They aren’t listening to the evidence that keeps mounting that Trump committed crimes while running for president and while serving as president.

Which brings me to the key point: How is it that Republicans today are so reluctant to proceed with their constitutional duties when two decades ago they were hellbent on impeaching a previous president for a whole lot less than the charges that are piling up against the current one?

In 1998, the GOP-led House impeached President Clinton. The reason was twofold: He lied to a grand jury that asked him about a relationship he had with a White House intern. Clinton took an oath to tell the truth; he reneged on the oath. The GOP said we cannot have a president who is “above the law.” Republicans threw in an obstruction of justice charge for good measure.

The House “manager” of the impeachment proceeding against Clinton was none other than a fresh-faced South Carolinian named Lindsey Graham, who said in effect that the House could impeach the president for damn near any reason it saw fit.

Today, that same Lindsey Graham is now a U.S. senator and he’s saying something dramatically different about Donald Trump. Despite what the special counsel, Robert Mueller III, said that he didn’t “exonerate” the president after his lengthy investigation into collusion with Russian election hackers, Graham keeps insisting that Mueller “cleared” Trump of obstruction of justice.

No. He did nothing of the sort.

Mueller only concluded that he couldn’t indict a sitting president, citing Justice Department policy; he also said such an indictment would be “unconstitutional,” although that terminology baffles me.

There is a huge mountain of evidence that suggests that Trump sought to obstruct justice by getting a former White House counsel to fire Mueller. That he canned FBI director James Comey to stop the FBI”s probe into the “Russia thing.” That he ordered the payment of hush money to a porn actress to keep her quiet about a fling she and Trump had in 2006, even though Trump denies it ever occurred.

I understand Pelosi’s predicament. I agree with her. However, for the life of me I cannot accept the Republicans’ refusal to budge on this president’s conduct when they were so anxious to pull the impeachment trigger on another president.

Oh, wait. Clinton is a Democrat; Trump is a Republican.

Gosh, do you think Republicans are putting their party over what’s good for the nation?