Monthly Archives: October 2019

national news

No, Mick, we won’t ‘get over it’

Mick Mulvaney needs to understand something about his role as the ostensible “acting” White House chief of staff.

When he makes public statements out loud in the light of day in front of the world. he cannot take them back.

A reporter asked him this past week about whether Donald Trump sought a “quid pro quo” in withholding funds for Ukraine in exchange for dirt on Joe Biden. He said everyone does it and that we all should “get over it.” Mulvaney said there always has been “politics” associated with foreign policy.

Oh, my.

No, Mick. Not true. Not quite like what we all know has occurred.

Donald Trump had that phone call with Ukraine President Volodyrmyr Zellenskiy. They talked about U.S. aid to Ukrainians fighting Russian-back rebels. Zellenskiy thanked the president for the missiles, but then Trump said he needed a “favor, though.”

He withheld the arms until Zellenskiy produced the goods on Biden, a potential 2020 presidential opponent. He sought foreign government help for his re-election.

That, right there, sits at Ground Zero of the effort to seek impeachment of the president. It is not a matter that we need to “get over.” It is a profoundly serious political act that once it is done — and impeachment by the House now appears to be a near certainty — it will stain this presidency forever.

I am not nearly convinced the Senate will evict Trump from the presidency when it receives the articles of impeachment and then conducts a trial. Too many GOP senators remain loyal to Trump, disregarding the obvious “high crimes and misdemeanors” that this president has committed.

One of them involves Ukraine and that matter about withholding military assistance in exchange for a political favor.

C’mon, Mick. Knock off the shilling for the president. You’ve been “acting” chief of staff for damn near a year. Do your job. Provide the liar in chief with the kind of stern advice that White House chiefs of staff are supposed to give the guy who hires them. If he won’t listen and if he insists on careening toward impeachment, there’s one more thing you do can do.

You can resign.

national news

Where are the ‘strict constructionists’?

I am bewildered.

Donald Trump took time today to belittle the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution, contained in the very first article of our nation’s governing document. He called it “phony.”

By bewilderment rests with the shocking non-response, the stone-cold silence among the president’s staunchest defenders  who in other arguments have argued on behalf of what they say should be a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. They are the “strict constructionists” who accept the founders’ work as the law of the land. There can be little if any deviation from what they wrote, these Trump defenders would contend.

Why, though, are they silent on the president’s denigrating of the founders’ words? The Emoluments Clause was written to prevent presidents from profiting during their time in office. They should accept no gifts or favors from “kings, princes or foreign governments.”

Yet there was the president, granting his own business — Trump Doral National Country Club — an expensive government contract to play host to the 2020 G7 summit of industrialized nations. Would he have profited from this event? Well … yeah. Bigly!

OK, he pulled it back after Republicans and Democrats alike condemned the decision to bring the G7 to Doral.

But then the president today blamed the media and Democrats for the pushback that erupted. That’s when he called the Emoluments Clause “phony.”

I have been waiting all day to hear from leading conservative politicians in Congress condemn the president in stark terms for his denigration of the constitutional provision. It is no phony document. It is real. It is vital. It is intended to prevent presidential corruption — although that last item clearly has taken deep and serious root in our executive branch of government.

The only “phony” aspect of this entire discussion, in my view, is linked to the idiocy that continues to pour out of the mouth of the president.

This individual is a disgrace.

national news

Mr. POTUS, there’s nothing ‘phony’ about the Emoluments Clause

Pay attention to me, please, Mr. President.

Your White House rant today about the “phony Emoluments Clause” compels to defend what the nation’s founders had in mind when they wrote that item into the U.S. Constitution.

They intended to prohibit the president from profiting during his time in office. Your initial decision to host the G7 summit of industrialized nations at your glitzy Trump Doral National Country Club was in direct violation of the Emoluments Clause.

You see, you cannot award yourself a government contract, which is what you sought to do. You cannot direct government business onto your privately owned, for-profit property, where foreign governments are going to pour millions of dollars into your pocket.

Good grief, Mr. President! There can be no clearer violation of the Emoluments Clause than that.

And yet your blaming of the media and Democrats and your insistence that President Obama somehow profited from a book deal while he was in office steers the discussion away from your own responsibility to do right by the office you occupy. While I’m at it, I need to wonder out loud whether you’ll ever get over your “hate affair” with your immediate predecessor.

And just to be clear, Barack Obama signed his book deal after he left office. It’s a non-starter, Mr. President.

We have a big country out there, Mr. President. It is endowed richly with many fine resorts to play host to the G7 summit. None of them has a single thing to do with your business interests.

Why in the name of presidential due diligence can’t you get your “fine-tuned” White House staff to find a spot that would serve as a fitting venue for this event next year? Moreover, why can’t you just do the right thing without making a mess out of it?

The Emoluments Clause isn’t “phony,” Mr. President. It is real and it is a legitimate hedge against presidential corruption … which I am certain is why you’re in such trouble at this moment.

local news

That was quite the storm!

I took a job 35 years ago in what I suppose you could call Tornado Country.

We moved our young sons from Oregon to the Golden Triangle of Texas, a region prone to hurricanes and the twisters that spin off the storms as they crash ashore from the Gulf of Mexico.

Then my wife and I moved to Amarillo, which also has experienced its share of tornado-induced misery since the beginning of recorded history. My wife and I once watched a funnel cloud form about a mile west of our house while baseball-sized hail pummeled our dwelling and destroyed our roof.

Then a year ago, my wife and I moved to Collin County in the Metroplex.

Tonight we had our first tornado “experience” since moving to Collin County. All is well and good. The storm passed south of us as well as south of our son, daughter-in-law, our granddaughter and her older brother. Our son’s extended family is safe, too.

However, this is the kind of thing — even after living in Tornado Country for 35 years — that still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

The local weather forecaster broke into a program we were watching to alert us of thunder storms. Then came the “tornado warning,” which means they had spotted a funnel cloud on the ground.

The storm chasers provided some gripping video to go along with the near-frantic commentary coming from the meteorologist. One of them caught a picture of a heavily damaged pickup stalled on Interstate 635; the driver of the truck then gave a thumbs-up to the TV crew that was taking pictures of the damage done by the storm that had roared through the area.

Our son informed us they had storm sirens blaring in Allen. Ours in Princeton stayed silent. We did, however, receive a lot of rain.

The storm has passed on. My hope is that our neighbors to the east stay safe.

How will I sleep tonight? Probably not well. Tomorrow, though, is another day. We’ll see what it brings.

national news

POTUS opens himself up to ridicule

Oh, brother. This showed up on my social media feed a little while ago. It speaks directly to the kind of idiocy we see so very often from the “leader” of the world’s mightiest nation.

I have next to nothing to add to these Twitter messages.

I am wondering, though, about this possible outcome.

Is it possible if the House of Representatives impeaches Donald Trump, can House members come up with something related to the incoherence and incompetence communicated from the White House in these Twitter messages?

Might there be a “high crime and misdemeanor” contained in this incessant and relentless denigration of the nation’s highest office?

media news

About to set a blogging record

1 Comment

I am going to boast for a moment or two about this blog. Forgive me if I sound a bit self-serving.

Probably in the next 24 hours or so High Plains Blogger is going to set a record for page views and unique visitors for a single calendar year. What makes this bit of news boast worthy is that we still have two months left in this calendar year.

2019 will turn into 2020 soon. By the time it does, this blog will have shattered to smithereens the record it posted in 2018, which beat the mark it set in 2017, which was greater than the readership it had in 2016.

That’s the good news.

The not-so-good news (I refuse to call it “bad) is that I will have set the bar extremely high for the next record to be broken by the time 2021 rolls around.

My hope is that 2020 proves to be a banner year, too, for High Plains Blogger. I enjoy writing it. I thoroughly enjoy being able to spend the time that full-time retirement allows me to spend.

I am likely to have just a tiny bit less time over the next year. I have taken on a freelance writing gig for a local newspaper group. I will continue to write for KETR-FM, the public radio station based at Texas A&M University-Commerce.

My interest in maintaining my personal blog remains high.

I had two stupendous months earlier this year, in January and again in March, that enabled me to set this record. I cannot predict what events will transpire during the remainder of this year or next year that might send blog traffic through the roof.

I’m just proud of the record I am about set. I am hoping to maintain interest in this blog.

What’s left now is merely to offer a word of thanks to those who read these words and those who find them worth sharing with their own social media network of friends and acquaintances.

As for what’s ahead, well … let me at ’em.

International news, military news

Oops, those troops aren’t exactly ‘coming home’

Donald Trump declared his intention to bring our troops “home” from Syria. He made a surprise announcement this past week that he would pull about 1,000 U.S. military personnel off the bloodstained battlefield.

He didn’t want our men and women to fight in “endless wars.”

OK, so the president followed through … with part of his plan.

The troops have left Syria, except that fewer than half of them are going “home.” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that about 700 troops are headed for Iraq.

I’ve commented already about the idiotic decision to abandon our Kurdish allies in the fight against the Islamic State. What is troubling now is that the president’s decision to leave one battlefield is apparently going to put our troops onto another field of battle, where soldiers are still dying.

I concur with Trump’s view that we shouldn’t be fighting in “endless wars” with no conclusion anywhere to be seen. There should be careful consideration, though, on how you do it. Such a plan needs to be crafted with intense consultation with national security, intelligence, military and diplomatic advisers. It doesn’t appear that the president did any of his seemingly mandatory due diligence prior to making this decision.

What’s more, he is sending troops to Iraq?

What the … ?

national news

Lt. Gov. Patrick to Trump faithful: We are fighting ‘the enemy’

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was part of a warm-up act for Donald Trump’s “Keep America Great” rally at the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas.

He didn’t disappoint those who came to cheer the president.

I was still working my way into the arena when Patrick took the stage, but I did see and hear him on the jumbo screen on the side of the AAC. He used the “e” word to describe foes of his conservative Republican policy machine.

He said “progressive socialist Democrats” aren’t just “our opponents; they are the enemy.” There you go. He went on to say they are the enemy of “liberty,” of “national security,” and I presume of the American way.

A future speaker of the U.S. House, Newt Gingrich, once declared during the 1994 Contract With America campaign that his aim was to make “Democrats the enemy of normal Americans.” Donald Trump declared the media to be “the enemy of the American people.”

Oh, there have been plenty of politicians who toss the “e” word around like that. Lt. Gov. Patrick is just the latest.

There is no need to wonder just how our political interaction has developed this level of coarseness.

I still prefer the approach sought by the late President George H.W. Bush that hoped to create a “kinder, gentler” nation. The “enemy” talk that I heard from Dan Patrick just makes me angry. We have enough anger out there already.

national news

Trump to Sen. Graham: ‘I am the boss’

It took me a moment or two to digest the quote I read about what Donald Trump reportedly said to Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican U.S. senator who transformed himself from a severe Trump critic to one of the president’s most ardent sycophants.

Graham is angry over the president’s decision to pull troops out of Syria and his abandoning of our Kurdish allies who have fought with us in the war against the Islamic State.

The Associated Press said that Trump told Graham, “I am the boss.”

The boss? Of what? Of whom?

Trump is the “boss” of the executive branch of the federal government. He has no authority over the legislative branch, of which Graham is one of 535 House and Senate members. The Constitution grants Congress “co-equal” power with the executive branch.

Graham, despite his disappointing fealty to Trump, does recognize that South Carolina’s voters sent him to the Senate to do their bidding and to stand up for himself when the need arises. He doesn’t work for Trump. He doesn’t have to do a single thing the president might demand of him.

As an MSNBC blogger, Steve Benen, reported: “With all due respect for the president, I think I’m elected to have a say about our national security,” Graham said. “I will not be quiet. I will do everything I can to help the president get to a good spot, but if we do not leave some residual forces behind to partner with the Kurds, ISIS will come back, it will put our nation at risk, we will have been seen as dishonorable in the eyes of all future allies.”

So, there you have it. Sen. Graham is beginning to show a bit of the spine he exhibited while campaigning against Donald Trump for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. I hope it continues to stiffen … although I am inclined to doubt that it will.

State news

Texas House speaker is playing a weird game with colleagues

Talk about doing an end-around …

Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, who’s under fire over a weird conversation he had with a fiery right-wing activist, has squandered the trust of his Republican House colleagues. He could just resign the speakership, but no-o-o. He decided to ask his colleagues to draft a resolution calling for him to quit.

Bonnen, an Angleton Republican, made an emotional speech Friday to his colleagues, apologizing for tossing several of them under the proverbial bus. His colleagues, though, decided against the resolution because House rules — not to mention the Texas Constitution — require them to be in active legislative session to remove a speaker from office.

Good grief, man. Just quit your speakership! At the very least, just announce you won’t seek the speakership for the 2021 Legislature.

Bonnen took part in a meeting in June with Empower Texans guru Michael Quinn Sullivan, who recorded the meeting he had with Bonnen and with former Texas House GOP chair Dustin Burrows of Lubbock. Bonnen offered Sullivan the names of 10 GOP legislators that Empower Texans could target in the 2020 election. He also offered to grant Empower Texans media credentials, which means House floor access to lawmakers.

Bonnen had tried to deny what he said. Then he apologized for saying mean things about his colleagues. Now we have heard the conversation. Sullivan had it right.

The Friday meeting was a tense affair, according to the Texas Tribune. House GOP members have condemned in strong language what Bonnen told Sullivan. They also are angry with Burrows. It is becoming apparent that Bonnen wouldn’t be re-elected as speaker if he decides to seek the office again.

The speaker is seeking to play some kind of weird game of chicken, it seems to me, with his Republican colleagues, several of whom have called for his resignation. He ought to knock it off.

Just submit your resignation or tell your colleagues you won’t run for the Man of the House job next time around.