Monthly Archives: October 2019

entertainment news

What if John Lennon had lived?

I am acutely aware that today would have been John Lennon’s birthday. He would have turned 79. He didn’t make it nearly that far into his life.

A gunman ended it all for John in December 1980. He died at 40.

I want to take the opportunity today while marking John Lennon’s birthday to take stock of what might have transpired had this genius been allowed to live. We, of course, cannot know with any certainty.

I’ll let my heart speak for a brief moment.

My ticker tells me John Lennon would have continued to make memorable music. He would have written lyrics that stand the test of time. He would have built on his already priceless body of work, most of it of course in tandem with his songwriting partner, Sir Paul McCartney. Might they have reconciled enough to re-form their partnership? Oh, one only can hope they might.

Hey, it’s also quite possible that John Lennon would have been knighted just as Sir Paul and Sir Richard Starkey — aka Ringo Starr — have been honored by their queen. I only can imagine the statement a Sir John Lennon would have issued upon getting this honor from the crown. I’ll add as well that George Harrison, who died in 2001, deserved to be knighted. Alas, it won’t happen.

John Lennon was my favorite Beatle. It might be only because we shared the same name. In reality, I was drawn by his quirkiness, his snarky approach to celebrity and his biting wit.

The boy could sing, too.

All of this is my way of wishing fate had dealt John Lennon a better hand than what he was forced to play.

I will miss this genius forever. Happy birthday, John.

business news, local news

Parking garage gets a tenant … more to come, hmm?

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That parking garage across the street from Hodgetown has a tenant. It’s a trendy restaurant called Joe Taco, which operates an eatery on the far west side of the city, near the medical center complex.

I understand the Local Government Corporation worked out an agreement that allows Joe Taco to operate in the parking garage rent free for the first year. Then it will pay rent on a graduated scale after that.

Good deal, yes? We shall see.

What I am not clear about just yet is whether any other tenants have signed on at the garage, which was built with considerable fanfare, hoopla and promises of more businesses to fill the ground floor spaces in the structure.

Hey, I remain optimistic that the garage will pay the freight, that it will lure other retail outlets to help defray the cost of operating the building.

Hodgetown is a beauty of a venue for the Amarillo Sod Poodles, which played championship-winning hardball at the ballpark in their first season in existence. Not a bad start.

I regret being unable to attend any games this year. I have moved away. We don’t get back to Amarillo as frequently these days. We’re settled in nicely in our new digs in Collin County. However, I remain a keen observer of Amarillo’s evolution and at this point I like what I see occurring there.

The parking garage adds an attractive edifice to the city’s downtown urban-scape. The gurus who conceived it have pledged that it will fill with businesses. I want their pledge to come true.

national news

Mr. POTUS, impeachment is quite ‘constitutional’

Donald Trump, as it has been noted repeatedly, doesn’t know what is in the U.S. Constitution.

Thus, when he complains that efforts aimed at impeaching him are “unconstitutional,” he merely reveals his utter ignorance of the nation’s founding document.

It’s in Article I, the part of the Constitution that lays out legislative responsibilities. It refers to how the Senate shall have the “sole responsibility” to try the president for crimes brought by a House impeachment. It’s near the end of Section 3. Really. It is!

And in Section 2, it says the House shall have the “sole power of impeachment.”

It states that impeachment shall reach no further than “removal from office” of the person being impeached. That includes the president. Yep. It’s in there, too.

So, there you have it. Donald Trump seems to believe the House is acting outside its constitutional authority.

Hmm. No. It isn’t. It is acting solely within its authority. It is following the letter of the law and of the Constitution.

The president needs to look at the document he swore to defend and protect. It’s not a difficult thing to do.

local news, Sports news

Mount Vernon HS grid coach brings trouble … who knew?

A part of me isn’t terribly surprised by the story that developed over yonder at Mount Vernon High School. Then again, is it fair to lay the responsibility of this tempest at the feet of the newly hired football coach? Oh, probably not.

But still …

Two Mount Vernon High School football players have been ruled ineligible to play. The school won’t suffer any forfeiture of games after playing these student-athletes during the team’s first five games of this football season. The University Interscholastic League had considered the forfeiture on the basis of the players enrolling at Mount Vernon simply to play football; the UIL thought differently. It won’t take away the first five wins from Mount Vernon, but the players remain ineligible.

Here, though, is where it gets weird. The new Mount Vernon HS head coach is Art Briles, the former head coach at Baylor University. Briles was fired in the wake of a sex scandal that occurred in Waco involving student-athletes who played for Briles. A law firm hired by Baylor determined that Briles should have acted to prevent the sexual assaults that were occurring, but didn’t.

The scandal also cost the athletic director his job as well as that of the president of the school, Kenneth Starr. Briles was shown the door. He coached football abroad for a couple of years before he got the call to coach Mount Vernon High School.

So, now he’s back in the game (so to speak) in this country. Granted, the eligibility issue concerning the two young men who were deemed ineligible has not a thing to do with the nature of the scandal that erupted at Baylor University.

It just seems to me that trouble seems to follow Art Briles.

Or … maybe it’s just a coincidence.

Strange, man.

national news

My gut is rumbling: Trump just might survive this mess

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I hate it when my gut starts to rumble. I get this queasy feeling down deep about certain matters occurring.

One of them is forcing a serious gut-churn way down yonder. Donald Trump, my innards are telling me, just might survive all this mess he has created. He appears likely at this moment to be able to avoid conviction in the U.S. Senate, if it is handed articles of impeachment from the U.S. House of Representatives; but even impeachment isn’t a lead-pipe cinch, even though the entire Democratic House majority is on board with an impeachment inquiry and potentially with actual impeachment.

Donald Trump has proven to be the master of evasion and, no, I am not referring to young Donald “evading” military service during the Vietnam War. Think for a moment about all the incidents during the 2016 presidential campaign that would have shattered a candidate’s dreams of winning the White House.

He said the late John McCain was a Vietnam War hero “only because he was captured”; he mocked a Gold Star family that criticized him at the Democratic National Convention; he mimicked and ridiculed a New York Times reporter afflicted with a crippling physical disability; Trump then admitted on that “Access Hollywood” recording to grabbing women by their pu*** because his “celebrity” status allowed him to do whatever he wants.

Imagine another politician, Democrat or Republican, getting away with that hideous campaign behavior. It boggles my mind.

So, now he’s president. He has acknowledged asking a foreign government for re-election help. He has admitted to asking an overseas power for help in digging up dirt on a potential 2020 opponent. He is on record telling Ukrainian officials that they can have help to fight the Russian-backed rebels if they did him a “favor, though,” meaning they had to do the favor before he would release the military assistance.

What does the current strife mean for the president? It means, to me, that his slipperiness has been able to deliver him from what should have been certain political doom.

Has this guy’s luck run out?

I hope it has. I fear he might find a way to avoid catastrophe.

national news

No ‘need’ to know whistleblower’s ID

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan is one of Donald Trump’s most ardent defenders on Capitol Hill. The Ohio Republican, though, has difficulty answering direct questions, such as whether it was appropriate for Trump to ask China to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

Jordan, an Ohio Republican, had the chance this past weekend to answer that question on national TV. He dodged it many times.

Oh, but now he says we need to know the identity of the whistleblower who has, um, blown the whistle on what he or she believes has happened in the White House.

Jordan said this: “Frankly I think the American people have a right to know who this whistleblower is. If we’re talking about the impeachment of the President of the United States, I think that’s important.”

No, it’s not critical, congressman, for us to know the ID of the individual who has put his or her career on the line.

All the public needs to know is whether this individual’s allegations are credible, that they can be proven, that he or she has told the truth to what he or she understands.

Federal law protects the identity of these folks who step forward to tell the nation when the witness wrongdoing or corruption within our government. Revealing these people’s identity strips away the intent of the law and deters others in a position to reveal wrongdoing from doing the right thing.

If Jim Jordan is going to “defend” the president against charges that he has violated his oath of office and put our national security at risk by inviting foreign interference in our elections, then let him make the case on its merits.

That is, if he can find any merits on which to base his defense.

national news

Yes, it’s time to impeach the president of the United States

You may now count me as an American who has changed his mind on whether to impeach the president of the United States, Donald Trump.

I had been in the camp of those who said impeachment was a potential political loser. I had joined House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in digging in against impeaching Trump. Why not wait until the 2020 presidential election? Why allow the Democratically controlled House to impeach Trump, only to allow the Republican-controlled Senate to acquit him?

That’s all changed. In my view, the president has delivered impeachable offenses to the House and to the Senate.

We had that memo taken from the transcript of the phone call Trump had on July 25 with Ukrainian President Volodyrmyr Zellenskiy, when Trump asked Zellenskiy for help in getting him re-elected. Oh, and then he asked for that “favor, though,” when he indicated he would withhold shipment of arms to Ukraine until after Zellenskiy did as Trump had asked.

The president is not allowed to seek foreign government assistance in that manner. It’s in the law. It is implied in the Constitution. Trump has broken the law and broken faith with the oath he took to defend the Constitution.

The House must not wait any longer than it needs to wait.

As for the Senate, I remain skeptical about that body’s collective courage, doubting senators will be able to muster the two-thirds majority it needs to convict the president and, thus, boot his sorry backside out of office.

Trump won’t cooperate with the House committees seeking information about what the president said and when and to whom he said it. He keeps insisting that he did nothing wrong, that his phone conversation with Zellenskiy was “perfect.” OK, then, why does he dig in and resist at every turn? Why does Trump insist that he didn’t ask Zellenskiy for dirt on a political foe, Joe Biden, when the memo already published suggests that he did that very thing?

He blasts the media, Democrats and even the few Republicans who’ve shown the guts to criticize the president. Trump says the impeachment drive is “illegitimate” and calls it an attempted “coup” to reverse the results of the 2016 presidential election.

Come on! The House is pursuing a legal attempt to hold the president accountable for his own acknowledged actions.

And then we have the whistleblower, acting under the protection of a law that aims to protect these individuals who reveal corruption in our government. One of them has filed a report with credible evidence that Trump has sought to use the power of his office for personal political gain. He or she has “indirect” knowledge. Then we hear about a second individual with “direct” knowledge of what already has been alleged.

Trump wants to reveal the identity of this individual, or both individuals. He is threatening them with the same punishment we hand out to those convicted of espionage.

If that isn’t witness tampering, or obstruction of justice or abuse of power then there is no standard that fits any of those misbehaviors.

Donald Trump needs to be impeached. The House needs to act with deliberate speed.

International news

Here is how dangerous POTUS can be

So, just how much danger can the president of the United States put this country?

Consider how he concluded that it is time for the country to pull out of Syria and effectively abandon the Kurds, with whom our troops have been battling the Islamic State.

Donald Trump says otherwise, but he announced his decision to leave Syria without consulting the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon, the CIA, the director of national intelligence. He acted on a phone call with Turkish strongman/tyrant President Recep Erdogan (pictured), who hates the Kurds and who well might move to obliterate our allies in the region.

Trump’s impulse was to pull out. It was to abandon our allies. He says he is keeping a “campaign promise” he made during the 2016 campaign. That is pure crap! He is not more interested in keeping that promise than he is in forcing Mexico to build The Wall, or to cutting the budget deficit.

At one level, I don’t necessarily oppose the decision to pull our troops out of harm’s way. Except that our nation already has committed to assisting the Kurds, who have done the bulk of the fighting — and suffered the bulk of the deaths — against ISIS.

How does the president plan to execute this strategy? Will he change his mind once again?

Our foreign policy lacks coherence. It is fueled by chaos and confusion, all of which comes from the Twitter account run by the president of the United States.

Do you feel safer now? Neither do I.

national news

Can a POTUS defy a congressional subpoena?

I am believing we are about to find out in short order whether Congress has the stones to enforce a subpoena it would issue to the president of the United States.

Donald Trump has ordered a State Department official, Gordon Sondland — the U.S. ambassador to the European Union — to ignore a congressional summons to testify about what he knows regarding the, um, Ukraine Matter. Sondland took part in a conversation with other officials regarding the phone call Trump had with the Ukrainian president, the one that has gotten Trump into so much trouble; it’s the call in which he asked for a political favor in exchange for his releasing money to help the Ukrainians fight Russian-backed rebels with whom they are at war.

There appears to be a subpoena on the horizon, don’t you think?

So, what then? Does Congress issue the subpoena and then let the White House run roughshod over its constitutional authority? Hmm. I doubt it.

We now might have a case of the president piling yet another impeachable offense on those that already are building. You know, something about “no one being ‘above the law.'” If Donald Trump believes he is “above the law,” then it well might fall on the House to throw that count onto an article of impeachment resolution.

It’s getting weird.

national news

Trump ‘jokes’ about asking China to ‘investigate’? Uh huh, sure

Donald “Knee Slapper in Chief” Trump just keeps cracking me up.

He strolls out onto the White House lawn and after revealing that he asked Ukraine for help in investigating former VP Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, he calls on China to do the same thing.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t see him winking or smirking when he said it. Gosh, he seemed quite serious about it. Didn’t he seem that way to you as well?

He’s in some scalding water at the moment because of his solicitation of foreign governments to help him get re-elected and do destroy the candidacy of someone who might run against him in 2020. House Democrats have launched an impeachment inquiry and are going to impeach the president, maybe quite soon.

Oh, but now Trump’s GOP allies in Congress say he was just kidding. He didn’t really mean for China to investigate anyone, especially the former vice president of the United States.

  • U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan refused to answer a direct question Sunday morning about whether he thought it was appropriate for Trump to solicit help from China.
  • U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio said Trump merely is trying to get the media riled up.
  • Sen. Roy Blunt said the president was kidding; he was making a joke.

Man, the president has to improve on his comedic timing.

Oh, but he wasn’t kidding. Any dunderhead observer who saw him make that statement didn’t presume Donald Trump was merely making a bad gag.