Monthly Archives: October 2019

national news

Awaiting a wonderful experience at MAGA Rally

I intend fully to enjoy myself in a few days when I venture into Dallas to attend a Donald John Trump “MAGA Rally” at the American Airlines Center.

No, I won’t cheer the con man’s lies at the Oct. 17 rally. I won’t slap others on the back for being so devoted to this pathological liar. I won’t join in any idiotic chants to lock anyone up; indeed, the only person who needs to be locked up appears to be the president of the United States … but I digress.

My good time will center on enjoying what I believe is a unique political experience.

I intend to pass out business cards as I talk to folks at the rally. I want to ask them why they (a) support the president and (b) dismiss the concerns of much of the nation that he has compromised our nation’s security in exchange for his own political future.

The answers should be, um, edifying in the extreme.

I want to report them to you on this blog. I also intend to offer my own views on what I see, hear and sense inside the building.

I’ve attended concerts at the American Airlines Center. I know roughly how many people it seats. I will be casting my gaze about the place to look for empty seats. I also want to report the size of the crowd that gathers to hear the president’s assorted rants. I keep hearing about how Trump inflates these crowd sizes. I intend to see for myself who takes time to attend this event.

Look, I am a partisan. I admit it freely and without reservation. I won’t vote for Trump’s re-election when — or if — the chance presents itself in November 2020. I still believe Hillary Rodham Clinton would have been a superior president in any way you can imagine.

However, I am not an idiot. I know how to behave myself at these events. I had the honor of reporting and commenting on two Republican Party presidential nominating conventions: in 1988 in New Orleans and 1992 in Houston. I thought the copy I filed while working for the Beaumont Enterprise was reasoned, rational and coherent.

I attended the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., but that was as a civilian. I had obtained media credentials to cover it for the Amarillo Globe-News; however, I got reorganized out of my job there, turning me into a non-journalist the moment I resigned my post as editorial page editor. My wife and I went to Charlotte anyway and I attended the DNC as a spectator and someone who supported the Barack Obama-Joe Biden ticket.

So … a new opportunity and challenge awaits. Donald Trump no doubt will be, oh, shall we say, entertaining. I might laugh a time or two at the president. However, I will be laughing at him, not with him.

national news

Trump takes aim at protected whistleblower

As if Donald John Trump wasn’t in enough hot water …

The president of the United States asked a foreign leader for re-election help and for dirt on a political foe; that’s bad enough right there. Then he suggested he would withhold money to help the foreign leader’s country in its fight against an aggressor nation until he got the help he sought; that makes it even worse.

House Democrats are gearing up for an impeachment effort against the president.

Is the president defending himself on the merits of what he has asked the Ukrainian president? Oh, no!

He has decided to take aim at the intelligence official who blew the whistle on what he or she believes is occurring, which is that the White House is trying to subvert the Constitution and is seeking to cover that effort up!

Trump wants to “interview” the whistleblower. Hmm. Is that, um, tampering with someone who is protected under federal law?

And then we see Trump talking about the whistleblower being “almost a spy,” and suggesting/implying that we need to treat spies the “way we used to” treat them, “when we were smart.” Does that mean execution?

The whistleblower’s lawyer has issued a warning that any effort to interfere with his client’s effort would violate federal law.

This individual, who reportedly comes from the intelligence community, is protected under the law to do what he or she has done. This person has presented, to my way of thinking, credible accusations that the president has violated his oath of office. He has solicited foreign government help in assuring his re-election. Trump has sought help from foreign governments for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

Furthermore, the president has put our national security at risk by withholding money to pay for weaponry that Ukrainians want to help them fight the Russians, who have invaded Ukraine; he would release the money if the Ukrainians decided to “play ball” with Trump’s re-election team.

Now he wants to know the identity of the person who has outed him? He threatens something “bad” happening if that individual doesn’t reveal his or her identity?

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have yet another “long national nightmare” in the making.

medical news

VA medical care: still top notch

I am happy — indeed, delighted — to report that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical care system is still tops in my estimation.

Now I will explain why.

I had an appointment at 10 a.m. today way down yonder at the VA’s Medical Center in south Dallas. Why mention that? Because I live about 40 miles north of the medical center in Collin County.

That meant I had to leave my house in Princeton at 8 a.m. to get there in time to check in and prepare for a medical examination I had scheduled. The VA told me to get there 30 minutes before my appointed time, which meant I had to leave extra-early.

Hmm. Eight in the morning driving along the Central Expressway through Dallas is dicey, yes? You bet it is! I got caught in morning rush-hour traffic. It became obvious to me around 9:15 that I wouldn’t get there 30 minutes early. I took a moment while stopped on the highway to call the office. I informed the voice mail machine that I would be late, that I was stuck in traffic; I’ll get there when I get there.

Right around the LBJ Freeway, the traffic jam broke up and we sailed along the Expressway, then on to Interstate 45 toward the exit I needed to take.

I pulled into the VA parking lot at 10:10, parked the car and rushed to the clinic where I was to be examined. I checked in. Then I waited for about, oh, 15 minutes before a young resident doc called my name.

We went to the exam room. He asked me a few questions. Then he got started. The exam took all of about 50 minutes. Then he said his “boss,” the attending physician would come in to go over the results of the exam.

She did. We chatted. I got a reasonably clean bill of health and was on my way.

I walked out of the VA medical center at noon. 

They could have pushed to the back of a long line. They didn’t. They could have asked me to reschedule, given that I didn’t get there 30 minutes beforehand. They didn’t.

I waited just a few minutes, which has been my experience dealing with my pre-paid medical plan.

I have been blessed since enrolling with the VA medical plan with good health. I have suffered no medical emergencies. My visits in Amarillo, where I enrolled initially and in Bonham, where I go now for my routine checkups have been routine. In and out just like that.

Today, though, presented a situation that could have turned out differently. It turned out just fine.

And the young resident, as so many of his colleagues have done whenever I have been examined, thanked me for my service to the country.

national news

Happy birthday, Mr. President

James Earl Carter is a force of nature.

He builds houses for poor people; he writes books; he lectures Americans on the value of ethics in politics; he teaches Sunday school at his rural Georgia church; he has monitored elections around the world; he lives modestly with his wife of more than seven decades.

Today he becomes the oldest former president of the United States. He already holds the record for living the longest past the time he left office; he exited the White House in 1981, which means he has lived 38 years past his presidency.

President Carter turns 95.

He has beaten cancer. He ran for president more than four decades ago, defeating a crowded field of Democratic Party primary foes. He ran a tough and bitter race against an embattled incumbent, Gerald R. Ford, and won with 297 electoral votes, which reflected his narrow popular vote majority; he and President Ford would then forge a friendship that lasted until Ford’s death in 2006.

President Carter lost his bid for re-election in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980, but he didn’t skulk off to pout over his loss. Instead he poured his energy into building the Carter Center in Atlanta and then building houses for Habitat for Humanity, a faith-based organization that does the Lord’s work around the world.

I will not engage in a debate over whether he was a successful president. I will say that he has been the most consequential former president in the past century, or maybe even longer than that.

President Carter is getting lots of good wishes from around the country and the world today. This good and godly man deserves all of them.

Happy birthday, Mr. President.

political news

MAGA rally on tap in Dallas … dare I see what it’s all about?

I have just committed — more or less — to doing something I hope I am able to withstand physically, let alone emotionally.

Donald J. Trump is coming to Dallas in a couple of weeks. He is going to stage a “MAGA Rally” at the American Airlines Center  in downtown Dallas. I presume the place will be full.

I just obtained a ticket from the Trump campaign’s official website. Ticket is sitting on my desk at home. I am looking at it as I type this brief message.

A part of me wants to go. In fact, most of me wants to see this spectacle for myself, to get a ringside seat for this stream-of-consciousness litany of insult and innuendo that is sure to pour fourth from the president’s pie hole.

A much smaller part of me wonders: Are you out of your fu***** mind?

Actually, no. I am of sound mind. My belief is that in order to understand a little better this individual’s appeal to a substantial — but shrinking — part of the American electorate I need to see one of these events up close.

I once took a friendly wager from the late mayor of Beaumont, Texas, Maury Meyers, to watch Rush Limbaugh on TV and listen to his radio broadcast over a span of time before making any snap judgement on his message. I accepted Meyers’ challenge.

Then I determined after about two weeks watching Limbaugh that the blowhard was worse than I thought. I wrote a column about my experience watching the right-wing gas bag and determined that Limbaugh was the Willard Scott of political commentary.

Except that Willard Scott, formerly the “Today” show weatherman, “makes me laugh” while Limbaugh “makes me sick.”

I fear I am going to get physically ill standing among the thousands of Trump supporters, cheering his mindlessness, whoopin’ and hollerin’ when he tosses out lie after lie.

At this moment, though, I am committed to attending this MAGA rally. Perhaps if I see, hear and feel the emotion boiling up inside the arena, I’ll be better prepared to say what I know already.

Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency of the United States.

International news

Ukraine story taking on more lives

This is how controversies evolve into full-blown scandals.

Something happens that raises eyebrows. Then we hear about more matters related — perhaps only tangentially — to the original event. Then more matters are heaped on all of that. Our attention gets stretched far beyond the original “sin.”

So it is happening now with the Ukrainian matter, the July 25 phone call that Donald Trump had the Ukrainian president and who else might have heard the two men talked about in that fateful conversation.

Trump is now known to have asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zellenskiy for help in his re-election effort, including getting dirt on Joe Biden, a potential 2020 campaign opponent.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he didn’t know anything about the phone call; then we hear from a State Department official, talking to the Wall Street Journal, that Pompeo listened to the phone call in real time.

Then the president decides to throw Vice President Mike Pence’s name out there, suggesting that the VP might be involved in some manner.

Oh, and now comes news that Trump sought help from Australia’s prime minister for help in undermining former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into The Russia Thing.

What in the name of scandalous behavior is happening here?

Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the formerly highly esteemed New York City mayor, has become unhinged. He rambles incoherently on national TV, accusing former Vice President Joe Biden of crimes that other prosecutors say are unfounded.

The House is force-marching its way toward impeaching the president on charges that he violated his oath of office by soliciting a foreign government for political assistance. Whether it results in conviction in the Senate, of course, remains a highly open question.

However, what could have been blown off as a mere “controversy” is becoming rapidly a full-blown “scandal” that will result in an impeached president running for re-election.

We are racing down heretofore untraveled roads.

Wow!

national news

Mike Pompeo has violated a West Point tenet?

Oh, my goodness. The plot is getting thicker by the hour.

This observation comes from a friend of mine, who posted this item on social media: Pompeo is a graduate of West Point. The United States Military Academy. One of the most important values at West Point is this: “A cadet will not lie or tolerate those who do.”
Pompeo is a liar.

The Wall Street Journal, hardly a left-wing publication, has reported that State Department officials say that the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, listened in on the phone call that Donald Trump had with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zellenskiy, in which Trump asked his counterpart for help in getting re-elected in 2020.

Except that Pompeo told journalists that he didn’t know anything about the phone call.

Hmm. Who’s telling the truth? The Wall Street Journal is a first-rate publication with first-rate political reporters. I’ll go with what the WSJ is reporting.

This story is growing more legs than a monster centipede.

Trump’s conversation with Zellenskiy wasn’t “perfect,” as Trump has called it. It appears to many of us that the president broke faith with the oath he took by asking for help from a foreign government to help his political fortunes. Moreover, he reportedly withheld appropriated money that Congress had approved to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggressors until it agreed to “play ball” with the U.S. president and members of his Cabinet.

Donald Trump has been outed, or so it is becoming clearer, by a whistleblower whose report has helped accelerate the movement toward an impeachment vote by the House of Representatives.

Now we hear that the secretary of state has been revealed to be as blatant and bald-faced a liar as the man who nominated him to be our nation’s top diplomat.

Utterly despicable.