Monthly Archives: December 2019

national news

What is there to hide if the phone call was ‘perfect’?

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

There is so much about Donald Trump defense strategy and the approach taken by his Republican allies in Congress that I do not understand.

The House of Representatives has impeached the current president on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate is supposed to put Trump on trial. Democrats want to call witnesses. Republicans are fighting that push.

All the while, Trump calls the impeachment a sham, a joke, a hoax, that there’s nothing to see, that the operative phone call with Ukraine’s president was “perfect.”

If Trump and Ukrainian President Vlodyrmyr Zelenskiy engaged in that perfect conversation, then why in the world are POTUS and his GOP allies resisting the demands to hear from witnesses in the Senate trial?

If they clear the president of wrongdoing, wouldn’t it make sense to hear them do so? If there is nothing to hide, then why does Donald Trump act and sound like he’s, um, hiding something from public view?

The appearance of a handful of key witnesses, critical White House aides, wouldn’t necessarily drag the trial into the far distant future. They might work in Trump’s favor; or, they might have precisely the opposite effect.

What’s more, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who today is resisting any witnesses in the Trump trial, was all in for witnesses when President Clinton went on trial in 1999 after the House impeached him. Is he driven solely by partisan concerns?

Why, that just can’t be, given McConnell’s criticism of the House impeachment, which he said was fueled by partisan hatred of Donald Trump. Isn’t that what he said?

If the Senate is going to put the current president on trial, then let’s have witnesses. Let’s see the evidence. Let’s then ask senators/jurors to deliberate over what they see and hear and then let’s demand they make their decision based on what has been presented.

With no witnesses or evidence presented at trial, then there’s nothing to consider.

Where I come from, that sounds like a sham.

national news

Gov. Cuomo picks a needless fight

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has performed a rather remarkable political feat.

With his veto pen, Cuomo has turned an innocuous piece of legislation, approved by the New York Legislature with overwhelming bipartisan majorities, into a conversation piece. For what reason, well … that baffles me.

Cuomo said while issuing his veto that he cannot “in good conscience” allow federal judges appointed by Donald Trump to perform weddings in his state. It all makes me go, huh?

The legislation expanded federal judicial authority in New York to include all federal judges; currently, only some federal judges can officiate over weddings. Cuomo doesn’t want to expand the judges’ authority to bring all such federal jurists into the wedding officiating fold.

The New York Senate approved the bill 61-1; the New York House Assembly backed it 144-2. Oh, and then there’s this: Democrats who belong to the same party as Gov. Cuomo control both legislative chambers.

I don’t get this grandstanding act by Gov. Cuomo. I do get that he opposes Donald Trump with every fiber of his being. I do, too. However, Gov. Cuomo would well do well to do a better job of picking his fights.

This particular issue seems like such a needless battle.

business news, local news, national news

Fire a CEO and replace him with … the boss? Huh?

There’s something about this story that doesn’t compute with me. Follow me for a brief moment.

Boeing Corp. has fired its chief executive officer, David Muilenberg, over the crisis that has grounded the once-highly touted 737 MAX jetliner, which was involved in two crashes that killed nearly 350 passengers and crew members. Boeing didn’t like the way Muilenberg handled the matter.

The company wants to restore confidence in the management, not to mention in the aircraft, the production of which Boeing has suspended.

So, who is brought in to replace Muilenberg? His boss, the chairman of the Boeing board of directors, David Calhoun, who takes over as CEO effective immediately.

I don’t know about you, but I always have presumed that a company in search of a way to rebuild shattered confidence and restoring its reputation would look outside its management structure for a fresh outlook, a new way of doing things, someone who can kick some a**.

The 737 MAX isn’t flying any time soon. The company isn’t building any new aircraft until it can fix the engineering the issues that reportedly caused the fatal crashes. The impact of this grounding has been significant right here, at Dallas Love Field, home base of Southwest Airlines, which operates a huge fleet of 737s.

Firing the CEO and then replacing him with the guy to whom he reported, it seems to me, doesn’t instill much confidence in me that the company has found the right formula to fix what has gone so terribly wrong.

environmental news

Wind power … what is to understand?

Donald Trump is known for, among other things, a remarkable “ability” to string sentences together without ever making any sense.

He said something this week about wind energy. I don’t know what in the world he was trying to say. A certain portion of his wind energy riff is getting the most social media attention. Here is what the president said:

We’ll have an economy based on wind. I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody. I know it’s very expensive. They’re made in China and Germany mostly — very few made here, almost none. But they’re manufactured tremendous — if you’re into this — tremendous fumes. Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint — fumes are spewing into the air. Right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right? So they make these things and then they put them up.

Ladies and gentlemen, that came from the mouth of the president of the United States of America … the man elected in 2016 because he, um, “tells it like it is.”

environmental news, International news

Bad optics? Do ya think, mate?

Well, you have “bad optics,” and then you have this.

Australia is enduring some of its worst wildfires in recorded history as the blistering summer heat is taking its toll Down Under. Where was the country’s prime minister, Scott Morrison?

He was vacationing in Hawaii with his family while firefighters were risking their lives, while scores of homes were being destroyed and while several Australians have died as a result of the flames.

Not surprisingly, news of Morrison’s whereabouts has gone over badly among Australians. The media have torched the PM over his extremely poor timing to vacation with his wife and children.

To make matters worse, Morrison’s staff denied initially he was vacationing in Hawaii. Then pictures emerged showing the Morrisons doing exactly that. Busted!

OK, the prime minister has apologized. He said in hindsight he would have made a different choice. It’s not clear whether the Australian public is going to accept the PM’s apology.

I have some friends Down Under who are likely to be pretty steamed over the prime minister’s initial decision.

Still, it’s time for the prime minister to get back to work and start acting like someone who cares that his country is burning. That’s what leaders are supposed to do.

medical news, national news

By all means, increase smoking age to 21

Sen. Ted Cruz is unhappy with Donald Trump’s decision to sign an increase in the minimum age for smoking to 21 years of age.

Sigh … Cruz needs to pipe down, get over it and let this policy move forward.

The Texas Republican has posted a Twitter message in which he criticizes the decision, citing the fact that people younger than 21 can go to war, they can fight for the nation and tragically, die in defense of the United States. “But they can’t have a smoke,” Cruz said.

Please. He is equating that argument with the move to reduce the voting age from 21 to 18 in the early 1970s. Proponents of that constitutional amendment cited the same argument Cruz is making about the smoking matter, that young Americans could go to war but couldn’t vote on the geezers in Washington who would send them into battle.

Apples and oranges, senator. You got that?

Trump backed the idea that smokers need to be 21 before they can purchase a pack of smokes. Retailers need to enforce that requirement the way they do the purchase of alcoholic beverages.

The rates of lung disease and assorted ailments related to smoking are climbing among young people, many of whom have been taken in by the vaping craze that is sweeping the nation.

By all means, raise the minimum smoking age to 21.

A word, though, to the president: Stop spelling “smoking” as “smocking” in your tweets. Many of us are with Donald Trump and Congress on this one, but the misspelling detracts from the seriousness of the message being conveyed.

local news

Christmas spirit is alive and well in our neighborhood

My wife and I have settled in nicely in our new digs in Collin County.

We have become acquainted with our neighbors on both sides of us, with neighbors in four homes across the street, a couple living on the corner … and apparently some children we see playing and cavorting on occasion.

Our community is becoming comfortable to the both of us daily.

We have received a taste of the Christmas spirit that seems to abound in our Princeton neighborhood.

The doorbell rang and a young man was standing on our porch. He handed my wife a small box. It contained freshly baked cookies prepared in the gentleman’s kitchen.

He handed my wife the box. We opened it. The cookies beckoned. We ate them. They were delicious.

Why mention this? I guess it’s because we have just experienced a neighborly gesture one doesn’t see all that often.

I thought momentarily of when we moved into our brand new home in southwest Amarillo in December 1996. We had just had the house built. We pulled out belongings out of storage, where they sat for nearly two years.

One day, just before Christmas, a neighbor walked across the street carrying a large plate of brownies. She wanted to welcome us to the neighborhood.

In all our years of marriage, in all the places we had lived that was the first time a neighbor had done something so kind. It made us feel as if we were part of the community.

It was the only time someone had extended a bit of holiday cheer to us … until tonight. 

The Christmas spirit is alive and well. We can testify gleefully to its good health.

national news

Bloomberg trying to buy Democratic presidential nomination

Michael Bloomberg has put a price on the Democratic Party presidential nomination he is seeking to buy.

Whatever it is, he can afford it. As the former New York mayor throws millions of bucks at TV ads, though, he is annoying the daylights out of this voter … that would be me.

I am troubled by the idea of this megazillionaire forgoing the early primary states to blanket the airwaves with TV ads that proclaim that he can parlay his business acumen into the presidency of the United States.

We had another rich guy do the same thing, in 2016. Donald Trump sold millions of Americans a bill of goods about his business success. We’ve all since learned that Trump’s success was, well, a bit of a mirage. He’s still rich, or says he is rich. He lives large with those glitzy resorts where he retreats from his duties as president.

But back to Bloomberg.

I recall the 1968 presidential primary campaign. Sen. Eugene McCarthy surprised President Johnson with a strong second-place finish in New Hampshire. Then came Sen. Robert F. Kennedy into the battle. RFK and Clean Gene fought state to state in primary battles. Kennedy won most of those fights; he lost the Oregon primary in May, then ventured to California, where he won that state’s primary.

On the Fifth of June, a gunman rewrote history. Sen. Kennedy died the next day.

Meanwhile, Vice President Hubert Humphrey had skipped the primary fights. He spent his time gathering up delegates more or less off the grid.

There’s a certain similarity to what we’re seeing today, except that VP Humphrey wasn’t pouring millions of his own dollars into the fight, chiefly because he didn’t have the money stashed away. Bloomberg is seeking to self-finance his campaign.

This whole exercise turns me off. I want him to face his opponents on a stage, answering questions about his change of heart. You’ll recall how he declared with what we now assume was a faux sincerity that he wouldn’t run for president in 2020. Now he’s in. What gives?

I prefer presidential candidates to get scuffed up along the way. All the rest of ’em this year have suffered their share of nicks, cuts and bruises. Michael Bloomberg’s vast wealth shouldn’t exempt him from the same kind of treatment.

national news

Trump continues to defy political norms

Given all the times Donald Trump has managed to wriggle free of potentially disastrous verbal blowups it has become absolutely impossible to gauge the damage that might be done by the president’s latest rhetorical misadventure.

On the day the House of Representatives impeached him for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, Trump stood before campaign rally crowd in Battle Creek, Mich., and implied that the late legendary congressman John Dingell might be “looking up” from hell.

The outrage was immediate. It was fierce. It came from both sides of the aisle.

Will this form of rhetorical nonsense spell the end for Trump? It should. Then again, so should any number of previous verbal disasters.

He denigrated the heroism exhibited by the late John McCain during the Vietnam War; he criticized a Gold Star couple for their speech at the Democratic National Convention; he was heard telling a TV interviewer how he grabs women by their “pu***” because … he can; he mocked a New York Times reporter’s physical ailment.

Through it all, Trump survived. His candidacy kept on track. He told the world that he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” and not lose any support. We laughed and groaned at the same time. It turns out he might have been (more or less) correct!

How in the world does this guy get away with this kind of thing?

Count me as one of those Americans who just cannot figure it out. The things he says would doom any other candidate or public officeholder.

And I haven’t even mentioned the incessant lying. Oh, wait. I just did.

The John Dingell matter speaks directly to the cruelty that frequently reveals itself from this individual. And that makes me wonder: Is there a limit to the cruel language that this man’s core supporters will endure?

national news

McConnell sets no bipartisan example

Yeah, this Twitter message from a former U.S. senator — who once wrote jokes for a living — sums it up for me.

The Senate majority leader is lamenting the absence of a quality about which he seems to know next to nothing. Mitch McConnell is angry about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to withhold the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump. He says House Democrats rushed to judgment against the president while impeaching him; then he says he won’t allow any witnesses to testify in the upcoming Senate trial that will determine whether Trump stays in office.

I don’t know whether to laugh or … laugh even more loudly.

McConnell is infamous for the partisan hit job he performed on President Barack Obama after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly in February 2016. Obama wanted to nominate someone to the SCOTUS to succeed Scalia. McConnell slammed the door shut, saying that the president shouldn’t appoint a justice in an election year that would determine who the next president would be.

Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the SCOTUS. McConnell denied Garland a hearing. It was a major-league partisan power play. It worked for McConnell, given that Donald Trump won the 2016 election.

Of course, McConnell has kept up his partisan wrangling during the impeachment saga, declaring that he intends to take his cue from Trump’s legal team and that he is “not an impartial juror.”

So, for the majority leader to gripe about Democrats’ alleged partisanship now is as Al Franken has described it.

Pathetic.