Monthly Archives: November 2019

military news

Trump’s recklessness roils the military high command

Donald J. “Corporal Bone Spurs” Trump once boasted that he knows “more than the generals about ISIS.” Actually, he doesn’t.

However, he is the commander in chief and I guess that gives him license to say things that are demonstrably false.

So, here we are. The commander in chief has overruled some senior military commanders regarding the status of a convicted Navy SEAL. In so doing the president has turned up the volume of dissent among the men and women who are charged with implementing military policy.

There is talk now about a serious “morale problem” among our vaunted military ranks.

I’ll back up for just a moment. Navy Petty Officer Edward Gallagher was convicted of posing with the corpse of an enemy fighter in Iraq. The Navy wanted to strip him of his SEAL Trident pin. The president intervened. He said Gallagher should keep his Trident. The Navy secretary, Richard Spencer, disagreed. Defense Secretary Mark Esper fired Spencer, who has spent the past few days criticizing Trump for his failure to understand “military order and discipline” and how it’s vital to operating the finest military apparatus in human history.

This tumult is working its way up and down the chain of command and through the ranks of the military personnel.

The commander in chief is empowered to do whatever he wishes. However, with this president — with zero military experience — there well might be a major price to pay if he continues to engender resentment among the individuals we thrust into harm’s way.

Make no mistake: Trump is not the first man with no military experience to serve as commander in chief. It’s just that he blathers so maddeningly about how much he purports to know about military matters.

On that score, this president is an ignoramus.

local news

Port Neches refinery fire is especially scary … for me

I heard the news this morning of that big explosion and fire way down yonder in Port Neches, Texas.

ABC News kept saying it was just east of Houston. The local Dallas-Fort Worth ABC affiliate, WFAA, referred to it more precisely: that Port Neches is just 15 miles south of Beaumont.

That kind of reference gets my attention because, as you might know, I lived and worked in Beaumont for nearly 11 years before my wife and I migrated from the Golden Triangle to Amarillo in 1995.

There have been no fatalities associated with the disaster. Some folks were injured. I worry about their health.

On a broader scale, I worry about our many Golden Triangle friends who live near the huge petrochemical and oil refinery complex throughout the Beaumont/Port Arthur region.

Petrochemicals and the refining of crude oil is the economic lifeblood of the region. When we moved to Beaumont in 1984, there was a school of thought that all one had to do to make a comfortable living was just get a high school diploma and then apply for work at one of the many petrochemical plants. They paid well. They were lifetime jobs if that’s what you wanted to do.

My former boss at the Beaumont Enterprise once told me that all those bass boats, expensive pickups and SUVs were paid for my the handsome wages earned at those plants.

There also is the danger associated with working at those facilities. I don’t recall seeing any major refinery fires explode during my time in Beaumont. The Port Neches fire, though, should remind us of the danger inherent in that line of work.

I haven’t even mentioned — until this very moment — the air quality issues associated with living in the proximity of those plants. That’s a story for another time.

I am worrying tonight, on Thanksgiving Eve, about the health of those who work in that environment and those — especially our many friends — who live nearby.

Please be safe.

national news

No, Mr. POTUS, you didn’t ‘beat’ your predecessor

“And then we beat Barack Hussein Obama and whatever the hell dynasty that is.”

Uh, Mr. President, I had to share that quote you blurted out in Florida last night just to remind you of the idiotic notions that fly out of your pie hole.

Mr. President, you didn’t “beat” President Obama. You never ran against him. Maybe you meant to allude to the fact that you did manage to eke out a win over the candidate he wanted to win, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

However, in keeping with your rhetorical carelessness and your penchant for lying, you didn’t bother to qualify that idiocy with anything approaching the truth.

Why? I am convinced as sure as I’m typing these words that you are utterly unaware of the meaning of “truth.” It is a foreign concept to you and your self-indulgence, self-aggrandizing and service only to your own self-interest.

So, when you blather something nonsensical about how you “beat Barack Hussein Obama,” we are left only to shake our heads … and hope like the dickens that you (a) are tossed out of office in the Senate trial or (b) are drummed out at the ballot box next November.

I remain hopeful that one of those things will happen.

I’ll add just this, once again: Mr. President, you make me sick.

national news

Sen. Kennedy: ‘I was wrong’ about Russia’s attack

What do you know about this?

It appears — and happily so — that Donald Trump’s penchant for refusing to apologize when he messes up isn’t contagious among fellow Republican politicians.

One of them, U.S. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, said over the weekend that Ukraine might have attacked our electoral system in 2016. The TV interviewer, Fox News’s Chris Wallace, asked him directly who he thought was responsible for the hack into the Democratic National Committee server. Kennedy said it could have been Russia, or it could also have been Ukraine.

Wallace pushed back, telling Kennedy that the U.S. intelligence community said uniformly that Russia was responsible. Kennedy didn’t take the bait in the moment.

The “Ukraine mighta done it” narrative has become a talking point among GOP politicians seeking to divert attention away from Russia and from Trump’s bizarre affection for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

Then Kennedy had second thoughts about what he told Wallace and told CNN’s Chris Cuomo he was wrong. Sen. Kennedy said he misheard Wallace’s question, then affirmed that Russia was responsible.

That didn’t hurt a bit, I’ll bet.

If only the nation’s top Republican, Donald Trump, could swipe a page from Kennedy’s book of contrition.

Alas, it won’t happen. Not ever.

national news

Absolutely stunning!

Yep, this picture is a product of Donald John Trump’s Twitter account. I saw it and at first I could not believe it actually came from this individual. It did.

I have virtually nothing to say about this picture, other than to toss out a few pejoratives: such as revolting, repulsive, disgusting, bizarre in the extreme.

I am left only to ask once more: Is this the individual you want representing this great nation as its president, its head of state and as its commander in chief?

Unbelievable!

military news

‘I prefer to eat with the men’

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Take a gander at this lovely couple. They are my late uncle and aunt, Tom and Verna Kanelis. They played a big part in my life and in the lives of my wife and sons.

I am thinking of them this week as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving. You may ask why. I will tell you.

They visited me once when I was a teenager stationed at a U.S. Army post far from home … for the first time, I should add. They made me feel “at home” on the other side of our vast nation.

I gave thanks to them in the moment for their presence in my life. I am doing so now.

It was Thanksgiving 1968. I had completed my Army basic training a month earlier in Fort Lewis, Wash. I got orders to report to Fort Eustis, Va., where I would attend aircraft maintenance school, learning how to service twin-engine OV-1 Mohawk airplanes.

Thanksgiving approached and we got word that we could invite anyone we wanted. I called Tom and Verna and invited them to join me for a holiday meal at Fort Eustis. They accepted. Here is where it gets so very pleasantly strange.

Tom was an Army colonel. He served as a staff officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C. He was a decorated infantry officer, earning the Bronze Star with valor after seeing intense combat during the Korean War. He had enlisted in 1943, then went to officers candidate school to earn his commission. He served heroically.

When he and Verna agreed to drive two hours south from D.C. to Fort Eustis, I added his name to the guest list, noting that it would include “Col. and Mrs. Tom Kanelis.”

The commanding officer of our training battalion was a lieutenant colonel. Someone on his staff noted that an active-duty “full bird colonel” was coming and Lt. Col. Wolfe wanted to make sure Col. and Mrs. Kanelis were treated, well, accordingly.

Understand that I am watching all this through the eyes of a late-stage teenager. It was akin to an out-of-body experience. I was far from my home in Portland, Ore. I was preparing to learn an Army skill for which I had no experience. I might be headed to war in Vietnam. I was nervous.

My uncle and aunt arrived on Thanksgiving for dinner. I greeted them as they approached the mess hall. We went inside. Lt. Col. Wolfe greeted Col. and Mrs. Kanelis and damn near tripped over himself trying to ensure that Col. Kanelis and his wife were welcome and comfortable. I watched from nearby and could barely contain the urge to bust out laughing.

Then came the question from Lt. Col. Wolfe: “Would you like to eat in the officers’ mess or with the men.” Tom didn’t blink, flinch or hesitate. “I prefer to eat with the men.”

I knew precisely in that moment what Tom had in mind. He did not want to expose me to ridicule from my enlisted colleagues that I was getting preferred treatment just because I happened to be related to someone who outranked the battalion CO.

We had our meal. I enjoyed the company of two people I loved very much. They made my first Thanksgiving away from home one of the more memorable experiences of my life.

They’re both gone now. I miss them terribly. As for Lt. Col. Wolfe, I don’t recall ever discussing that day with him during my time at Fort Eustis. I hope he appreciated the self-control I demonstrated by not laughing out loud at what I witnessed.

Uncategorized

Happy Thanksgiving, SFA Lumberjacks!

Well now, they’re going to be smiling broadly in Nacogdoches, Texas this Thanksgiving.

Why? Because the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks scored the university’s biggest upset victory in its history Tuesday night with an at-the-buzzer, game-ending layup to defeat No. 1-ranked Duke University … in the Blue Devils’ building in Durham, N.C.!

I want to dispel something that Sports Illustrated reported incorrectly on its online edition about the game.

SI.com referred to SFA as a “small school” in East Texas that had the nerve to take on a giant powerhouse such as Duke. Indeed, SI.com reported that big-time basketball powers routinely schedule less-regarded teams to fatten up their won-lost record; that part is true.

But “small school”? Compared to Duke? I looked it and here’s what I found in my World Almanac and Book of Facts: Duke’s enrollment totals a little more than 15,900 students; that compares with SFA’s full-time enrollment of 12,600 students. So, you see? The schools’ sizes are, um, comparable.

OK, I get that SFA is not in the same league — normally! — with Duke University on the basketball court.

Except that on one night, in Durham, the Lumberjacks chopped down the biggest “tree” in the school’s history.

Happy Thanksgiving, Stephen F. Austin. Enjoy your turkey!

International news

Stupa offers grisly reminder of why we should give thanks

Take a good look at the structure you see here. It’s called a stupa. This one is at a place called Choeung Ek, which is just outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

I’ve visited this place twice, in 1989 and again in 2004. I have written a blog post already about a remarkable Thanksgiving dinner some colleagues and I enjoyed in Vietnam in 1989. We had just visited Cambodia and returned to Vietnam to continue our journey through Southeast Asia.

I want to explain what this stupa is and what it contains.

It is temple that is full of human skulls. They were dug out of the ground, excavated from mass graves around the structure. The men, women and children who were buried there were victims of one of the 20th century’s most hideous regimes, the Khmer Rouge terrorists who ran Cambodia from 1975 to 1978. Their leader, Pol Pot, wanted to purge his country of citizens who were educated, who presented any sort of threat to the regime’s power.

All told, it is estimated that Pol Pot killed about 2 million Cambodians in one of the century’s worst cases of genocide. The country is littered with mass graves similar to the one next to the stupa.

We spoke during that 1989 tour of Cambodia with survivors of that terror. One young woman told me then that if Pol Pot were to come back and threaten her country, “We all will become soldiers” who would fight the Khmer Rouge to the death.

The Khmer Rouge didn’t come back. Vietnamese armed forces invaded the country in 1978 and exposed the horror to the world. The authorities were able eventually to hunt down Pol Pot. They captured him and imprisoned him; he died while awaiting trial for crimes against humanity.

The killing fields have been set aside as permanent memorials to the sacrifice endured by brave people of Cambodia. I want to show you this stupa to illustrate just one more time why our Thanksgiving in Vietnam was so special to us.

It filled me 30 years ago with a sense of gratitude I likely would not have felt had I not laid eyes on this stupa and peered at the skulls stacked from floor to ceiling inside it.

Yes, the holiday is a time to reflect. I choose to reflect as well on the tragedy that so recently befell a far-off land and pray — no matter how unlikely — for an end to this level of inhumanity.

When you lay eye on the evidence of such horror and hear the testimony of those who lived through it … and enjoy a meal served to commemorate your nation’s Thanksgiving holiday, you certainly understand why you have so much for which you give thanks.

national news

Trump gobbles incessantly while pardoning a pair of turkeys

Good grief! All he had to do was smile, say a few funny lines prepared for him by his speechwriters about a deed he was about to perform, shake a few hands and call it good.

But when Donald Trump stood in front of the White House — along with the first lady — with a couple of turkeys for which he issued the usual “presidential pardon,” he chose to make, um, a political speech.

He made some nonsensical mention of the pending impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives, he tossed out his favored epithet toward the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sought to brag about the unparalleled strength of the U.S. military.

He made a bird-brained spectacle of himself in a ceremony that could have produced good-natured laughs over a tradition that began during the administration of President Bush 41.

But … no-o-o-o. It didn’t play out that way, at least not to my ears as I watched it as it occurred this afternoon.

Let’s remember that this guy’s previous full-time gig prior to being elected president of the United States was as the host of a network “reality” TV show. Donald Trump is no stranger to staged events.

Weird, man.

national news

When did Jared find peace in the Middle East?

I must have missed something regarding the tasks assigned to Jared “The Grifter-in-Law” Kushner.

Wasn’t he assigned to craft a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement, one that allows Israel to rest knowing that it never would be threatened by its neighbors? Did he finish the job?

Now I hear the president of the United States, the father of Kushner’s wife, wants the young man to oversee construction of The Wall along our nation’s southern border.

Wow! Talk about multi-tasking!

Kushner, of course, has no business serving as a senior policy adviser to the president. Neither does his wife, Ivanka, for that matter. They hold those posts because Donald Trump cannot find senior advisers with actual experience in world affairs. Folks with actual relationships with world leaders. Those with real-life knowledge of what it takes to find peace, to keep peace and to build international alliances.

So the POTUS turned to his daughter and son-in-law. Their so-called “qualifications” utterly mystify me.

Now Jared Kushner gets a new task. How does he have the time? He’s also in charge of trade policy, innovation, not to mention a growing list of other jobs.

Get cracking! Build that wall, Jared!