Monthly Archives: August 2019

political news

Was the 2016 election ‘rigged,’ Mr. POTUS?

Mr. President, I lost count of the number of times you said that the 2016 election would be “rigged” if Hillary Rodham Clinton were to win the presidency.

I remember how it became a sort of campaign stump speech mantra. You kept hammering away at what you said would be a “rigged” result stemming from what you said were “Crooked Hillary’s” instincts. I recall how you said the Democratic Party rigged its nomination outcome to ensure Clinton would carry the party banner against you over Bernie Sanders.

Well, your victory surprised a lot of us, Mr. President.

But then came the reports of Russian hackers interfering in our electoral system. I accept that Robert Mueller’s investigation said you and your campaign didn’t conspire to collude with the Russians.

However, his insistence that the Russian interfered on your behalf brings to mind the question: Was the 2016 election “rigged” to benefit you, Mr. President, over your opponent?

You have kept so very quiet about that aspect of the election. I know you have stood by your pal Vladimir Putin’s denial that he interfered in our electoral process. I also know how you’ve undercut the nation’s intelligence network that says categorically that the Russians interfered in our election.

I once thought out loud that the Russian attack didn’t have a discernible impact on the election result. I have changed my mind.

national news

POTUS wants to ‘investigate everything’? Really?

Kellyanne Conway might be the worst liar since, oh, perhaps Donald John Trump.

The president’s senior policy adviser made some talk show appearances today and got asked about Trump’s decision to retweet that ghastly rumor that Bill and/or Hillary Clinton had a hand in killing financier Jeffrey Epstein, who reportedly hanged himself in that Manhattan jail cell; Epstein was awaiting trial on charges that he engaged in sex trafficking of young girls.

Conway said the president merely wants to “investigate everything” in connection with the death of his former friend, Epstein — who also happened to be pals at one time with the former president, Bill Clinton.

So, Conway would have us believe that to further the search for the whole truth he chose to defame the former president and perhaps his wife — who happened to be Trump’s 2016 presidential election opponent — by spreading that ghastly rumor of alleged complicity in the death of Epstein.

Who in the world does Conway think she’s talking to? I mean, does she think all Americans are rubes and blind loyalists like so many of those who comprise the president’s fervent “base” of voters?

Let me give you my spin on it.

Donald Trump deals in innuendo. He doesn’t possess the necessary inquisitiveness that seeks the truth into anything. He has traded for longer than he has been in political life on stabbing others in the back.

Was he looking for the truth when he suggested that Sen. Ted Cruz’s father might have been complicit in President Kennedy’s murder? Or when he fomented the lie that Barack Obama was not constitutionally qualified to run for president of the United States?

This individual is a liar and a fraud. He has surrounded himself with fellow liars and frauds. That includes Kellyanne Conway.

national news

Conspiracy theories live forever and ever

They will never die. Not ever. They will live far beyond all of our time on Earth. They’ll outlive my sons’ time, too.

What are “they”? Conspiracy theories! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

Jeffrey Epstein’s death in the Manhattan, New York City jail cell has spawned ’em by the dozens. Already! You see, Epstein was supposed to stand trial after he pleaded not guilty to charges that he peddled young girls for sex.

Epstein had some high-powered friends. Two of them became “former friends” for reasons that aren’t exactly clear. Their names are Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. 

Now that Epstein is dead, the conspiracists have developed some hideous notions that Clinton might have been involved in killing him. Others have suggested Trump played a role in murdering Epstein.

These theories are going to take root. Their roots will run deep.

We’ve had our share of eternal conspiracy theories.

  • President Kennedy’s murder in Dallas couldn’t possibly have been committed by a lone rifleman.
  •  The 9/11 terrorist attacks were the work of those within the George W. Bush administration looking for reasons to go to war.
  •  President Barack Obama was born in Africa and was not qualified to run for the office to which he was elected twice.
  •  Those pictures from the moon’s surface were shot in a studio somewhere on Earth.
  •  Good grief, there are those who have suggested that President Roosevelt goaded the Japanese into attacking us at Pearl Harbor.

And so they have gone. They’ll go on forever.

Indeed, conspiracy theories already exist involving former President Clinton. They involve bogus allegations of people with dirt on the president and his wife ending up dead. Indeed, those phony rumors are thought to be the source of the latest defamatory rumors surrounding the death of the miserable pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Are there questions that need answering? Surely, yes.

However, I believe I can predict today that no matter how thorough the explanation, or how much evidence they produce to back whatever conclusions they draw about Epstein’s death, there will be those who will purport to disbelieve what they see and hear.

They will trade on conspiracy theories. What’s worse is that there will be those who are willing to take the bait.

Disgusting.

local news, Sports news

Sod Poodles’ winning ways become infectious lure

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Let’s face it. Winning is a wonderful inducement for sports fans. It brings out those who might otherwise decide to stay home rather than go to the ballpark for an afternoon (or evening) of entertainment.

I present to you the Amarillo Sod Poodles, who entered the Texas League this year and — in some instances — have taken the league by storm. Why and how? They’re winning a good bit more of their games than they’re losing.

The Sod Poodles existed previously as the San Antonio Missions. Then the Alamo City landed a AAA minor-league franchise that played ball previously in Colorado Springs. The Missions needed a new home to play AA hardball. They looked around. Amarillo came calling. The powers that be in the Panhandle pledged to build a new ballpark. They offered the franchise some financial inducements.

Then the team decided to relocate. They needed a new name and a new brand. They came up with the Sod Poodles.

However, this wasn’t a team built from scratch. I mean, the franchise infrastructure already was in place. They had an organization backing them, the National League San Diego Padres.

The Sod Poodles won the first half South Division title this year. They’re in first place so far in the second half of the season. They’ll be in the playoffs once the regular season concludes.

They’re playing before full houses at Hodgetown. The cheers have been loud and throaty from what I understand.

It fills me with joy to know that Amarillo is turning out to support this team with shouts and cheers.

I won’t speculate how the fans would react if the Sod Poodles weren’t winning more than half of their games. I just know that winning does have a way of ginning up support.

This baseball franchise is off to a smashing start.

national news

Running out of ways to describe POTUS’s behavior

It’s more or less official: I have run out of words to describe the depths of despicability with which to refer to Donald J. Trump’s behavior.

His one-time pal Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself in federal custody in a Manhattan jail cell over the weekend. The president then decided to retweet something posted by someone else that suggests that Bill and Hillary Clinton orchestrated Epstein’s murder.

Yep. That has come from the president of the United States.

Epstein was facing justice over an accusation that he engaged in human trafficking of underage girls, reportedly for sexual purposes. He used to be friends with Trump … and with Bill Clinton.

The president of the United States has decided — yet again! — to abuse a social media outlet to spew filth. He has done this in an unfathomable number of times over the years.

Without a scintilla of evidence, he has chosen to implicate by retweeting someone else’s message that a former president of the United States might have committed a terrible crime.

This isn’t just disgraceful. Or despicable. Or distasteful.

It is dangerous behavior!

This is how you “make America great again”? This is how “tell it like it is”? This is how you “put America first”?

Unbelievable.

local news, State news

Hey Democratic candidates for POTUS, come on down!

Hey, I understand the large field of Democrats running for president of the United States have been seen scurrying around the Iowa State Fair. They’re scarfing down alleged “fair food,” kissing babies, shaking hands, begging for votes.

Good for them. Good for Iowa, which kicks off the nation’s first electoral process leading up to the 2020 presidential election.

However, we’ve got a state fair coming up right here in Texas. The Texas State Fair commences in Dallas on Sept. 27. It runs until Oct. 20. They’ll play a big college football game — Texas vs. Oklahoma — during the run of the fair.

Oh, and Texas figures to be every bit as much of a “battleground state” in 2020 as, say, Iowa. And … our primary will be early in the election season.

Here’s my point. I want to see the Democrats pour into Texas just as they have done in Iowa, are doing so as well in New Hampshire and South Carolina, two other early primary states.

I live a bit north of Big D, but I just might find some time to venture to the State Fairgrounds before the fair closes down for the year. I want to see some of these folks up close. I want to hear with my own ears what they’re telling voters, how they’re pitching their candidacies.

Come on, candidates. Big Tex beckons you to the Texas State Fair.

What’s more, the fried beer is worth a try.

crime news

Trump takes despicable behavior even lower … honestly!

I thought maybe I was reading a joke. Or something from The Onion, the satirical “newspaper” that prints spoofs in such a believable fashion.

But no-o-o-o. It was real.

Jeffrey Epstein, the accused sex trafficker, died in a Manhattan jail. The former pal of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump supposedly hanged himself.

So, what does the president of the United States do? He retweets a bizarre notion that the former president and his wife, former U.S. senator and secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, are complicit in Epstein’s death.

I am going to presume a couple of things might be in play. One is that Trump actually believes it. Another is that he is so filled with hatred for Hillary and Bill Clinton that he would smear them in this manner. Still another is that POTUS might have some sort of political death wish. OK, the last thing is the least likely.

Hatred runs deep

I am inclined to think that Donald Trump hates the Clintons to a degree that he would do anything on Earth to defame them.

For the president to do what’s been reported is about as despicable an act I can imagine.

This man has no shame. Or decency.

crime news

Hoping to get the call for jury duty

I am not a weirdo. Really. I’m not. I do, though, want to fulfill a civic duty that always seems to escape me.

I want to serve on a trial jury.

My wife and I moved from Randall County to Collin County in Texas a little more than a year ago. We registered to vote almost immediately. We have renewed our motor vehicle tags in Collin County. The folks at the county clerk’s office know we’re residents of this county; so do those at the district clerk’s office as well as the tax collector-assessor’s office.

It’s just that whenever I have gotten the call during all those years — 23 of them, in fact — that we lived in Randall County, I always was told “don’t bother to report.” I’d get my summons. I would call the preceding day after 5 p.m., per the instruction on the summons. Then I would get told that the cases all had settled and that “all jurors” were excused.

Damn, man!

I once served on a grand jury in Randall County. The district attorney, James Farren, told us that service on the grand jury likely would disqualify us from any trial jury, given that grand juries serve under the direction of the state. The grand jury receives criminal complaints from the DA’s office and then decides whether to indict someone for the crime listed on the complaint. That was a marvelous experience.

Still, now that I’ve moved away I am hopeful that the court system in Collin County — whether it’s a district court, a county court at law or a justice of the peace — would see fit to summon me to report for jury duty.

I’ve always wanted to sit on a trial jury. Does my grand jury experience taint me forever as a “pro-cop” kinda guy? No. It does not.

Hey, I’m retired now. I’ve got nothing but time on my hands. I don’t work for a living, although we have plenty to do around our house. It can wait, though, while I would serve on a trial jury.

Too many people look for ways to evade/avoid/skip jury duty. Not me. I want to serve. Come and get me. I’m all yours.

crime news, national news

The conspiracy theories have started … already!

Jeffrey Epstein’s corpse likely isn’t even all that cold just yet and already social media are crackling with conspiracy notions of how he died, why he died, who made it happen … along with all manner of nefarious motives.

Epstein was the accused human trafficker who peddled underage girls reportedly as sex slaves. He was pals with people in high places, most notably Donald J. Trump and William J. Clinton, the current and former president of the United States of America.

What is admittedly bizarre about Epstein’s death is the manner he supposedly was taken off suicide watch. He reportedly tried to hang himself in the Manhattan jail where he was being held. Corrections officers found him unconscious; he had marks on his neck suggesting he tried to string himself up. The jail put slapped a suicide watch on him. Then they supposedly lifted it.

That begs the question: Why do you remove the suicide watch on an inmate you believe tried to kill himself in your custody?

My maximum distaste for conspiracy theories has nothing to do with what we need to know in this moment. Yes, I want answers. I want to know how this a**hole was able to hang himself in the presence of corrections official who were tasked with keeping this high-profile suspect alive long enough for his case to be determined.

I want those answers delivered in a timely fashion. It would seem to be within easy grasp of those in charge of the Manhattan jail that was housing Epstein.

What I don’t want to hear are those crackpots out here way beyond the perimeter who think they know what happen and will concoct any harebrained scenario they can think of just to keep the pot stirred. I detest, for instance, those theorists who think they know what happened to JFK in Dallas in November 1963.

I will agree wholeheartedly that there are a lot of questions to be answered. The presence of a president and a former president in this guy’s sphere of friends and acquaintances makes this case extraordinary on its face. There likely were a lot of high-powered individuals with a lot to lose were this guy to go to trial.

Let’s find out what happened to this dude.

national news

Here come the Epstein conspiracy theories

If I were a betting man I might be willing to wager a lot of real American money on the prospect of conspiracy theories exploding all over the place in connection with the weird death of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The former friend of presidents and assorted high rollers was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell this morning. He had been on suicide watch, which supposedly would have made a suicide a virtual impossibility. The lockup took him off the suicide watch, reportedly.

And then he hanged himself. Poof! Just like that the guy allegedly with tons of secrets about what he did with whom was gone. Forever. He’s deader’n a doornail.

Can’t you just imagine now how the conspiracy theories can develop?

I mean, he was friends with Bill Clinton and Donald J. Trump. He was worth many millions of dollars. He had been convicted already of a sex charge involving underage girls in Florida. The alleged prosecution of that case cost Labor Secretary Alex Acosta — who was a federal prosecutor in Florida when Epstein got caught — his job in the Trump administration.

As for former President Clinton, let’s just say he’s a conspiracy/scandal magnet. He’s been vilified amid myriad phony conspiracies dating back to when he was governor of Arkansas. Why stop concocting goofy conspiracies now?

Yep, there can be little doubt that the so-called theories are going to start flying. Who knows? They might rival the John F. Kennedy assassination, moon landing and Jimmy Hoffa conspiracies in their longevity.

Frankly, these theories sicken me.

I do, though, want answers on just how this low-life managed to kill himself while in the custody of law enforcement and corrections officials whose job was to ensure Jeffrey Epstein lived long enough to have this case adjudicated one way or another.

Talk to us. Now!