Monthly Archives: February 2020

local news

Two-fer endorsements: Idea is catching on?

This must be a new thing, more or less, in the world of newspaper editorial endorsements.

Editorial boards face a lengthy list of candidates for a specific office; they interview the contenders; they can’t settle on a single candidate to endorse … so they go with two of ’em!

Hmm. The New York Times did so when it endorsed U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic Party presidential primary contest.

Now it’s the Dallas Morning News doing the same thing regarding the Democratic primary contest for the U.S. Senate now occupied by Republican John Cornyn. The DMN couldn’t decide on a single candidate, so they offered up Texas state Sen. Royce West and former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards for readers to consider.

I believe that’s a bit of a cop-out on the part of the newspaper.

I get the paper’s semi-endorsement of West. He hails from Dallas. He has represented the city in the Legislature for a long time. He is a powerhouse legislator. He’s a hometown guy, sort of a “favorite son.” 

Edwards also impressed the Morning News editorial board. She’s well-educated and well-grounded in public policy.

However, shouldn’t newspapers that seek to lead a community make the same tough call that their readers will have to make when they enter the voting booth to cast their ballots for political candidates?

I am in the process of making up my own mind on who gets my vote in the upcoming Super Tuesday primary election. We’ll get to select someone to run for president along with a whole lengthy array of candidates on all manner of public offices up and down the political food chain.

We have to pick just one for each race. I had been kinda hoping for a bit of guidance from my newspaper on who to ponder in this race for U.S. Senate. I guess I’m on my own.

national news

Democrats have been pummeled over Iowa debacle

The Iowa Democratic Party has become the laughingstock of the U.S. political community.

Except the folks at the Democratic National Committee aren’t laughing. Neither are the rest of us out here who want the party to nominate someone who can defeat the current president of the United States, Donald John Trump.

An “app” malfunction at the Iowa caucus might have doomed the state’s goofy selection process, which to my mind isn’t a bad thing.

Except that it has taken most of a whole week to get the results. Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders finished virtually tied at the top of the Democratic heap. Can either of these fellows defeat Trump? Hmm. I have serious doubts.

The party’s electability mantra has hit a number of sour notes as a result of the caucus malfunction in Iowa.

Meanwhile, Trump is basking in that Senate acquittal at his impeachment trial; he is exacting revenge within the White House against those who testified before Congress; the POTUS gave that idiotic, but weirdly popular among his base, speech to the National Prayer Breakfast and then followed that up with an hour-long riff at the White House.

Democrats have some rebuilding to do. They need to establish a frontrunner. The back-of-the-pack candidates need to give up on their longshot effort. They damn sure need to scrap the caucus idea in Iowa and in other states and return to a nominating process that allows voters to cast their ballots in secret, just as they do when the general election rolls around.

I want someone to emerge soon from this mess as a probable nominee. I would prefer the candidate to be from the more “centrist” or “moderate” portion of the party. The Big Mo, though, appears to be generating on the far left wing of the Democratic Party, to which I offer a word of warning.

Think of 1972, when Democrats nominated a lefty to be president. Sen. George McGovern drew huge crowds. They cheered loudly. He filled himself with some sort of deluded hope that, by golly, he might have something significant to offer.

Then he lost 49 of 50 states.

Take great care, Democrats. Fix the political infrastructure and come to your senses.

national news

Just think, the evangelicals still love this guy

A social media meme showed up on my Facebook news feed. I thought about posting it on my blog, but decided against it.

Why? Because it contains language I don’t like using, even when it comes from other sources.

It comes from the guy who would become the 45th president of the United States. It was recorded in 2005 when he was speaking to an “Access Hollywood” personality.

He talks about wanting to “fu**” a married woman, how he “moved on her like a bitch.” He talked about this person’s “big phony ti**.” He said he could “grab her by the pu**y” because he was a celebrity.

I read that meme time and again. Each time I came away even more astounded at how the evangelical Christian movement can continue to stand by Donald John Trump.

Has this guy changed since he talked so crassly, so callously? I mean, fundamentally changed? No. He is the precisely same individual.

Absolutely astonishing.

national news

Trump likely to turn 2020 campaign into personal bloodbath

Those of us out here beyond the Beltway who want an issues-centric campaign for the presidency are likely to be disappointed greatly in what we get from the major-party nominees.

Why? Because the Republican incumbent, Donald John Trump, appears intent on personalizing the fight. He will level a heavy barrage of innuendo, laced with insults at whomever the Democrats nominate to oppose him.

Bet on it. This is the type of campaign that lines up just the way the president wants it.

As for the Democratic Party nominee, he or she had better be prepared for what is likely to come.

To be candid, I am weary of the insults that Trump hurls with abandon. I want to know what he intends to do about the serious crises facing this nation and the planet: climate change, for one. Trump says climate change is a hoax, although he did recently make a sort of endorsement about how important the environment is to him. It sounded more like a platitude than any sort of serious assessment.

I will not hold breath in anticipation of any sort of serious discussion by Trump and, by extension, by the Democratic nominee. If the Democrat talks about serious matters, the public is likely to tune him or her out.

So that produces a campaign of personal vitriol.

Yes, it will be a virtual repeat of what we got in 2016.

The Democrats nominated an eminently qualified public servant in Hillary Rodham Clinton. She blew it apart at the end by ignoring key Rust Belt states that Trump’s campaign adroitly picked off, enabling him to win a slim Electoral College majority.

Throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump kept up the drumbeat of innuendo against Clinton, suggesting corruption that no one has been able to prove against her.

Take this to the bank: The president will do the same thing against whomever he faces as he seeks re-election. The Democrats’ challenge is to be ready to slug it out.

The losers in this bloodbath will be, well … you and me.

So very sad.

national news

Democrats need to pay careful attention to James Carville

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Consider yourself forewarned: The item I am attaching to this brief blog post contains some rough language, but the underlying message is spot on.

It comes from former Bill Clinton political adviser — and creator of the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid” — James Carville.

Carville warns that the Democratic Party is squandering its chance of defeating Donald John Trump later this year if it nominates a non-Democrat, a socialist in the form of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Read it here.

Carville says he is “scared to death” of the party’s future if it marches down the far-left side of the highway upon which Sanders is traveling. I happen to concur with what Carville is asserting.

It is not unrealistic to believe that Trump could win re-election in a 40-state landslide if Democrats are foolish enough to nominate Sanders, who Carville said isn’t even a Democrat. He is an independent who represents Vermont in the Senate. But there he is, sitting at or near the top of the Democratic Party field.

Carville knows how to win these elections. He helped steer Bill Clinton to victory in 1992 in impressive fashion. Clinton won with a substantial Electoral College majority and a strong plurality among voters in a three-way race that included the late Ross Perot running as an independent candidate.

So, when Carville urges his party, the Democrats, to look more pragmatically at a nominee, someone who tacks more to the center than to the far left fringes, then I believe he is onto something.

media news

At times it becomes a game of ‘Can You Top This?’

You know already how I enjoy writing this blog.

It’s what I do. I enjoy getting told that I am a “prolific” blogger. Now and then, though, I have to stop and watch some of the reactions that come from those read my musings.

Those who like what I write respond to those who dislike my point of view. The reverse of that is true, too.

I have been watching a few readers of this blog go at each other hammer and tong.

Regrettably, though, these exchanges get personal. They get nasty. They become an insult contest. They also become a sort of a “Can You Top This” game, where one individual offers a smart-aleck retort to something that comes from some unknown adversary. I say “unknown” because quite often the antagonists are acquainted only through whatever social medium they see this blog; Facebook is the most common platform I use to distribute my blogging spewage.

Back and forth they go. Seemingly forever. They wear me out, man!

Watching these exchanges play out as a result of something that comes from my fingers simply reinforces my self-imposed rule: Don’t get into a pi**ing match, particularly with someone you don’t know; everyone always gets wet.

However, it does give me a chance to watch and to revel at times in the snark that emanates from those who like to one-up someone on the other side.

If only they would avoid the meanness.

local news

Puppy Tales, Part 82: Toby finds a new best friend

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Toby the Puppy tips the beam at around 12, maybe 13 pounds.

He thinks, though, that he is much larger. Much meaner. Much tougher than he is. So, when he encounters another pooch of more impressive proportions, Toby might be inclined to ruff and woof his way toward them.

That is, unless he and the other pooch somehow communicate with each other that says “Hey, it’s all good. Let’s be friends.”

He did so today. Toby’s mother and I took him for his morning stroll through the neighborhood. We encountered a friend of ours who was walking his, um, great Dane. Duke is the Dane’s name. He is nine months of age. He weighs in at around 100 pounds. Our friend says he’s still growing, likely to around 150 pounds.

Toby and Duke hit it off right away. They sniffed each other’s … you know. There was no huffing and puffing. No growling. No snapping. Just good old-fashioned canine fellowship.

Which leads me to believe that dogs must be far more intuitive than we give them credit for being. Toby and Duke both knew the other one is friendly. They surely must have communicated that mutual knowledge to each other.

To be sure, our Toby has other large puppy friends. Our grandpuppy, Madden — aka Mad Dog — and Toby and great pals. They carry on whenever they see each other. We venture to our son and daughter-in-law’s home in Allen and the first order of business is to turn the pooches loose in the back yard where they spend a good bit of time running full tilt around the yard.

We have a niece and nephew who live in Austin. Their puppy, Lucy, also gets along well with Toby the Puppy.

Today, Toby the Puppy expanded his roster of friends by one. It just amazes me to the max how our little guy — who tends to think of himself as a big guy — knows when to display his good manners.

national news

Trump allies want impeachment wiped off the books?

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that Donald John Trump would be impeached “forever,” that he would take the House’s impeachment with him to his grave.

Not so fast, say some of the current president’s allies in Congress.

Some of Trump’s GOP allies are considering whether to introduce a resolution to have the impeachment expunged from the record. That’s it. They want the congressional record to no longer reflect what is now inscribed permanently into history.

I am baffled as to how that is supposed to work.

Trump stands impeached on grounds that he abused the power of his office and obstructed Congress. The House impeached him for those counts and then sent them to the Senate, which this week acquitted him after a slam-bam trial that was devoid of witnesses.

So, does that mean the impeachment shouldn’t stand? Of course not. It means only that the Senate, led by Trump’s Republican allies, decided they would not convict him of the charges that the Democrat-led House filed against him.

An acquittal by one body does not negate the action of another body. The Constitution says the House has “sole authority” to impeach a federal official; it says the Senate has sole authority to put that official on trial.

Besides, expunging the record does not mean that (a) those of us who are alive to witness the event will forget about it or (b) historians won’t acknowledge that the impeachment occurred in the first place.

Don’t you see? Speaker Pelosi was right. Donald Trump will be “forever” remembered as an impeached president.

national news

Trump’s scorched-Earth policy taking hold

Gordon Sondland is a goner. So is Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.

What did these two men do to lose their high-powered jobs within the Donald John Trump administration? They told the truth to congressional committees seeking answers to a phone call that the current president made this past July to the president of Ukraine.

Sondland, a hotel magnate, was the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. Vindman, a native of Ukraine (which was part of the Soviet Union when he was born) served on the National Security Council staff as an expert on Ukraine; oh, and Vindman also is a decorated Army hero who was wounded in battle.

The men told the truth as they understood it. They told congressional questioners about Trump’s phone call in which he asked Ukraine for political help. Vindman said the request troubled him when he heard the president ask for it. Sondland said it was “understood” that Trump was asking for a favor.

Trump won his acquittal this week from the Senate. He went to the National Prayer Breakfast and trashed Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Mitt Romney, the first senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a president of his own party. It was Donald Trump at his vengeful worst.

Now he has canned two men. One of whom, Vindman, is a proven patriot; the other, Sondland, is a dedicated Trump supporter who gave lots of money to elect the president in 2016. I should mention as well that Trump canned Vindman’s brother, who also served on the NSC. Vindman’s brother, Yevgeny, another Army officer, did not testify. Trump fired him, I guess, because his brother Alexander might have said something to him about the Ukraine matter. So, if one Vindman gets fired, let’s make it a clean sweep and get of them both.

Trump is mad as hell at them. There likely will be more firings to come.

Hmm. Rather than invoking the call for harmony and unity in the wake of his acquittal of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, Donald Trump appears to be setting a course that seeks to exact maximum vengeance.

Yes, he is entitled to act this way. It still packs a serious stench.

State news

How will the Bloomberg strategy play in Texas?

BLOGGER’S NOTE: This essay was first published on KETR-FM radio’s website, ketr.org.

The Super Tuesday Democratic Party primary presidential race is just a shade less than a month away.

On March 3, Texans will get to vote for who should be the next Democratic nominee for the presidency. The Texas ballot is going to include a name that’s been missing from ballots that will precede this huge political event.

Michael Bloomberg is the man of the hour. Or at least he wants to be the man of the hour – or the man of the primary – at the end of that quite important election.

I am trying to assess whether Bloomberg’s strategy of staying out of the early primary states while concentrating initially on the Super Tuesday.

Democrats are going to select a significant majority of their convention delegates that day. Bloomberg wants to gather up most of them. Will his Super Tuesday strategy pay off?

My wife and I watch a good bit of TV during the day in our Princeton home and we see and hear millions of dollars’ worth of ads touting the candidacy of Bloomberg, the former three-term New York City mayor. The latest round of ads includes a spot that features former President Barack Obama saying nice things about the leadership qualities that Bloomberg has exhibited while running the nation’s largest city.

Oh, wait! Joe Biden, the former president’s “brother from another mother,” also is running for the presidency this year. Obama hasn’t endorsed Bloomberg. He also hasn’t endorsed his good friend and former political partner (Biden served as vice president for eight years during the Obama administration). The former president is staying out of the nomination fight. He’ll likely endorse whomever his party nominates this summer.

Bloomberg is opening 11 more campaign offices in Texas. He is hiring hundreds of political workers. He is setting up what they call a “ground game” here. What I’m trying to grasp as Bloomberg’s date with Super Tuesday draws closer is how his platform will play here.

He talks about gun control. He speaks in support of a woman’s “right to choose” whether to remain pregnant. Bloomberg wants to amend the Affordable Care Act, not toss it aside. From what I’ve witnessed in Texas is that (a) Texans don’t want to mess with the Second Amendment, (b) Texans are mostly “pro-life” on the issue of abortion and (c) Texans don’t think much of the ACA.

Michael Bloomberg, though, needs to demonstrate that he’s a real Democrat, as opposed to some sort of faux Democrat who changes his party affiliation to suit the political mood of the moment. I mean, he once was a Republican; then he became an independent; now he’s a Democrat.

What’s more, Hizzoner also once declared his intention to stay out of the 2020 presidential campaign. Now he’s all in.

But … is he? All in?