Monthly Archives: February 2020

local news

Preparing for a sad, but also joyful, duty

I am preparing at this moment to take a four-hour ride from Dallas-Fort Worth airport to Portland, Ore., where I will participate in what can be best described as a cycle of life ritual.

I will bid farewell to my beloved uncle, Jim Phillips. I will be there along with his wife, his children, many of his grandchildren, one of my sisters and virtually all of my cousins on my mother’s side of my boisterous family.

It will sadden me to say goodbye. It also will enable us to rejoice in the full and fruitful life he had over the span of his 93 years on this good Earth. We will gather to remember the richness that Uncle Jim brought to us. I trust we all will in our own way pledge to cling to those memories as we move on through the rest of our lives. Those thoughts will not sadden me. They will make me smile.

These events are part of what all families must endure. Indeed, as I am now well into that stage of my own life, having just turned 70 a little while back, my sisters, along with my wife and sons, realize as I do that the clock is ticking for all of us. The number of our family elders with whom we grew up is diminishing  far too rapidly.

However, it is the inevitable march of time over which no one has any control.

It’s been said many times by many people perhaps over many adult beverages that “Not a single one of us gets outta here alive.”

So it goes … and so it will be.

environmental news, local news

Ready for the best season of the year

(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

You hear it on occasion: This is my favorite time of the year. My favorite season of the year. Most folks I know keep saying it’s the autumn.

Why? They’ve been through a grueling, boiling-hot summer. The cooler temperatures are a welcome respite from the heat.

That’s not for me. My favorite time of the year is about to arrive. I love the spring. In Texas, spring produces an unusual and often unpredictable series of events.

We have spent 36 winters in Texas. We came initially to the Golden Triangle on the Gulf Coast. Winter in Southeast Texas occasionally was, well, rather un-winterlike. We spent our first Christmas in Beaumont — in 1984 — lounging around in shorts and t-shirts.

Nearly 11 years later we gravitated to the opposite end of the state, settling for 23 years in the Panhandle. The winter there was, shall I say, more like winter in most regions of the world. It got cold … damn cold at times! We had winters with heavy blankets of snow. We also had one hideously dry winter that didn’t produce a single drop of precipitation.

We have moved to the Metroplex. This is our second winter here. It’s been a bit chilly, although not as cold as it often gets up yonder on the Caprock.

Spring is about to arrive. The grass will snap out of its dormancy. The leaves will produce buds. It’s a time of renewal. A time of rebirth. A time that will give way to the fruits and flowers of the season.

Spring in the Panhandle occasionally produces some explosive weather. The wind howls. The storm clouds swirl. It rains hard, man. It would hail on us.

The Metroplex occasionally produces that kind of frightening weather. However, I look forward yet again to the time of year when we spring forward and emerge from our winter doldrum.

It’s my favorite time.

environmental news

Is there an option for states to take the lead on climate change?

If Congress and the president aren’t going to take a serious interest in climate change, isn’t there a place for states such as Texas to take the lead on what I and others believe is an existential threat to the nation?

I get that Texas’s Legislature isn’t exactly a haven for environmental activism, given its strong Republican majority in both legislative chambers. However, the state does possess the world’s 11th or 12th largest economy; its carbon footprint continues to be bigger than it should be.

Yes, some of the Democratic candidates for president keep talking about the need to tackle climate change head-on. They profess concern for the dire peril that Earth faces if we don’t do all that we can as human beings to curb the human impact on the changing climate.

The current president, of course, remains ignorant about that danger posed by deforestation, carbon emissions and the warming of our atmosphere. Given that he has no interest in science or any other fields of study dedicated to this condition, I cannot possibly expect Donald Trump to take the necessary lead as the nation’s president.

Texas, though, faces an existential threat all by itself. Our state’s coastline is receding every year a little at a time. The tides are rising as well, largely because of melting ocean ice at both of our poles.

Texas and other states — especially those states with political leadership that takes this threat seriously — can do what they can individually or perhaps in conjunction with each other to wrestle with this burgeoning environmental crisis.

It would take a miracle, I suppose, but I am going to hope that Texas legislators can appreciate the impact they could have on national policy if they were to take the lead on dealing head-on with this national emergency.

legal news, national news

Trump is correct: It is ‘legal’ for him to interfere with DOJ … but it’s not right!

Here’s a flash for you: Donald John Trump happens to be correct in saying that his meddling in U.S. Department of Justice criminal matters is “legal.”

It doesn’t make it right. However, what Trump is doing with his meddlesome tweets about DOJ cases and his undermining of the attorney general’s authority on certain matters doesn’t break any laws.

So, this president now freed of the threat of impeachment — at least for now — has embarked on a new campaign of heightened abuses of the office he still occupies.

Trump fired off a Twitter message that disparaged a sentence recommendation for his old pal Roger Stone, whom a jury convicted of multiple felonies. Attorney General William Barr then responded by reducing the recommendations. The line prosecutors who authored the initial request quit in protest.

Barr then told ABC News that Trump should stop tweeting about these matters, saying it makes it “impossible” for him to do his job.

Trump has kept tweeting messages. Barr is thought to be angry about it. Trump then said what he’s doing is “legal.” Yes. It is legal.

It is wrong, nonetheless. It is wrong for Trump to throw his weight around in this blatant manner. It is wrong to interfere with the attorney general’s duties. It is wrong to meddle in the nuts and bolts of sentencing, which is handled in this case by a federal judge … who also has drawn brickbats hurled at her by the president. Whatever happened to the “independent” federal judiciary? Trump is undermining that independence, too!

Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing in real time a president who is seeking to reconfigure the relationship between his office and the rule of law.

I am frightened at what we are seeing.

national news

Are we heading for a repeat of the great electoral fluke of 2016?

It pains me to the depths of my gut to acknowledge this, but my fear is growing that Americans are going to get Donald John Trump for another four years as president of the United States.

Yes, it looks to me at this moment that the Democratic Party is quite capable of squandering a golden opportunity to restore the presidency, to return it to a level of respectability and reverence that has been dismantled during the Trump Era.

That once-monstrous field of contenders has been culled to a more reasonable size. Who, though, is left standing? Who are the top contenders?

A zillionaire. A couple of “progressives,” including a “democratic socialist.” A former vice president who cannot stop tripping over his own tongue. A one-time mayor of a smallish Midwest city. A sitting U.S. senator who is trying to appeal to the center-left of her party. Another zillionaire who rose to prominence by funding an effort to impeach Donald Trump.

Joe Biden once was thought to be the unstoppable Democrat. At this moment his campaign is imploding. His so-called “firewall” in South Carolina is showing severe fracturing as African-American voters are now looking for an alternative to Barack Obama’s wing man.

Nominating a far-left socialist is the death knell for sure, in my view.

What is most maddening is that Donald Trump has spoon-fed the opposition all kinds of electoral grist to use against him. The House of Representatives impeached him; the Senate acquitted him, but the impeachment still stands.

Trump has angered millions of Americans with his hideous pronouncements, his foul mouth, his trashing of allies, his incoherent campaign-rally riffs, his pandering to religious groups with whom he has no actual alliance, his disparaging of the nation’s top military minds, his standing with hostile strongmen, his denigration of our intelligence analysts.

Oh, and then there’s the lying. It’s incessant. He cannot tell the truth about anything at any level. He gets caught lying and his political base blows it off.

On and on it goes.

Still, this most astonishing politician — the president — very well might win re-election because he is somehow, amazingly able to claim credit for an economic recovery that he inherited from his immediate predecessor.

This clown never should have gotten elected in the first place. He squeaked in by the narrowest of margins, losing the actual vote by nearly 3 million ballots but winning just enough Electoral College votes to win the election. I do not dismiss that he won according to the rules spelled out by the U.S. Constitution, a document of which he has zero understanding.

The 2016 election stands in my mind as the greatest political fluke in U.S. history. If he wins again in November, then we will have committed the next greatest fluke in history.

national news

This POTUS will stay with us … for what will seem like forever!

I am trying to imagine the unimaginable.

Donald John Trump won’t be president of the United States forever, even though it is likely to seem like forever even after he leaves office.

I hope he leaves sooner rather than later. The “sooner” might occur on Jan. 20, 2021, when his current term expires and he hands the White House keys over to whomever succeeds him. The “later” — heaven forbid! — might arrive four years later, in 2025, when he walks away after a second term.

What is unimaginable is the thought of Donald Trump fading quietly into the sunset, into the woodwork, that he’ll not be seen or heard except only on rare occasions.

Ohhh, no. What is more likely to occur is that we’ll never escape Donald Trump for as long as he draws breath. No one lives forever, although Trump might want us to believe that he’s the exception to that hard-and-fast rule.

Recent previous presidents generally have subscribed to a certain rule: They’ve had their time at the center of power; then they hand it over to someone else and they disappear from public view — more or less. President George H.W. Bush was famously quiet when he gave way to President Clinton in 1993; Clinton has maintained a bit of a public presence, but has been mostly out of the limelight since turning it over to W. in 2001. President George W. Bush was quiet during his successor’s two terms, and President Obama has kept quiet during Donald Trump’s term.

Does anyone expect the current president to follow the model set by so many of his predecessors? Does anyone seriously expect No. 45 to keep his Twitter fingers still while whoever succeeds him engages in policymaking, let alone if the next president decides to undo some of the decisions that Trump and his team implemented during his time in the White House? Imagine, for instance, the next president reinstituting some of the environmental regulations that Trump summarily terminated and then Trump sitting quietly while that happens.

Donald Trump vowed to be an unconventional president and, by golly, he has made good on that pledge. I am concerned, though, that he’s going to be an equally unconventional former president who’ll be unable or unwilling to just fade away.

My hope is that we get to find out quickly.

national news

Mike and Hillary vs. Donald and Mike? This must be a joke

I realize fully I am likely getting way ahead of myself, but some media are reporting it, so I will offer a brief comment.

It is being talked about that Michael Bloomberg is considering fellow New Yorker Hillary Rodham Clinton as a potential running mate if Bloomberg manages to snag the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Oh … brother. Say it ain’t so.

I’ll restate what I consider to be the obvious. I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 to become the 45th president of the United States. I cast my vote without an ounce of regret. She remains highly qualified to be our head of state.

However, she also is a colossal punching bag for Donald Trump and his Republican smear/slime/slander machine. To that end, Hillary Clinton likely would overshadow a nominee named Michael Bloomberg. Does the next presidential nominee want to be eclipsed by a VP running mate who will become the focus of idiotic chants such as, oh, let’s see: “Lock her up!”?

The Drudge Report has reported that Bloomberg is considering a Mike/Hillary ticket. So has MSNBC. Who else is going to join the bandwagon?

This would be a monumentally bad idea for whomever the Democrats nominate for the presidency. It’s not that Hillary is a bad candidate. It is only that she presents the kind of insurmountable distraction that is going to pull voters’ attention away from the issues that ought to matter as we consider for whom to vote as our next president.

Furthermore, I do not want to hand the current president any additional ammo he can use to slither his way to re-election.

State news

R.I.P., Texas GOP trailblazer

I never thought of Clayton Williams as a political trailblazer.

Then comes word today that Claytie — a Midland oil and natural gas tycoon who ran for Texas governor in 1990 — has died at age 88.

I extend my condolences to Williams’ friends and family. I do want to offer a comment on his single, but futile run for public office.

He sought the governorship running against the late Texas Treasurer Ann Richards — who had rocketed to national notoriety with her stellar 1988 Democratic National Convention keynote speech in which she declared that then-GOP Vice President George H.W. Bush “can’t help it, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

Richards and Williams, a Republican, faced off two years later. Williams was poised to win. Then he started committing a series of gaffes. He compared inclement weather to rape, urging Texans to “relax and enjoy it”; he refused to shake Richards’ hand at an event, a gesture that rankled many Texans who believe a gentleman shouldn’t act that way toward a woman; then he revealed he didn’t pay federal taxes when the oil industry was collapsing in the 1980s.

Richards won the governorship. She served a single term before losing in 1994 to the “silver-footed” VP’s son, George W. Bush.

The Texas Tribune’s Ross Ramsey makes a fascinating point, though, about Williams’ political legacy. He notes that Bill Clements was the lone Republican to win the governorship since the Civil War Reconstruction era. Williams lost in 1990, but well might have paved the way for “W” to win in 1994.

Since then, according to Ramsey, Republicans have clamped a vise grip on the governorship, as well as every statewide office.

The things you can learn …

Rest in peace, Claytie.

legal news

Ex-deputy FBI director speaks for millions of us about ‘maniacal rage’

The U.S. Justice Department has declared it will not pursue criminal charges against an embattled former deputy FBI director who’s been one of Donald John Trump’s key targets for the past couple of years.

Andrew McCabe, though, says doesn’t believe he ever will be “free” of Trump’s “maniacal rage.” He will live forever, McCabe said, with Trump seething over imagined transgressions that POTUS says were committed by the lifetime public servant.

McCabe speaks for many millions of Americans who fear the same thing. Long after Trump is gone from the White House, I am one American who dreads the prospect of a former president continuing his assault on our emotions through social media.

Trump and then-attorney general Jeff Sessions fired McCabe on allegations that he hadn’t been forthcoming in interviews with DOJ officials. Trump then fired Sessions and has kept up the drumbeat of innuendo against McCabe and his wife ever since.

McCabe was set to retire from the FBI with full benefits before Sessions and Trump canned him. McCabe said he has lived in a nightmare ever since.

I am glad to know that DOJ investigators have determined there will be no criminal charges brought against the former deputy FBI director. I also am glad he has been relieved of such a threat of criminal prosecution.

What I wish now for McCabe, his wife and the rest of us is for Donald Trump to go away quietly after the November 2020 election. I know that’s not going to happen. He’ll either win re-election, in which case we’ll never hear the end of it from him … or he’ll lose his re-election bid and we still never hear the end of it. 

Many of your fellow Americans feel your pain, Mr. Deputy FBI Director.

national news

Trump proposes pilfering defense funds to pay for The Wall

I guess Donald John Trump can stop pledging to force Mexico to pay for The Wall he wants to build along the border that separates us from our neighbor.

He now intends to pilfer money appropriated to pay for defense projects to pay for the structure.

What happened to “promises made, promises kept”?

Texas Democrats and Texas Republicans are criticizing a plan to divert $3.8 billion in defense money to pay for The Wall. One of the critics happens to be Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Clarendon Republican who once chaired the House Armed Services Committee. Thornberry, who isn’t running for re-election this year, calls the diversion an inappropriate maneuver.

The money involves assembly of aircraft being built in Texas. They are the F-35 fighter and the V-22 Osprey, the tiltrotor aircraft assembled in Amarillo, which Thornberry represents.

As the Texas Tribune reported: Thornberry … stated that the southern border was a national security challenge that partisanship had “exacerbated,” but he took issue with the executive branch’s decision to reallocate the funds. (H)e said that while the Department of Defense was able to make recommendations in the budgeting process, once appropriations decisions are made, “the Department of Defense cannot change them in pursuit of their own priorities without the approval of Congress.”

Then again, understanding how that process works requires a commander in chief with knowledge or a willingness to learn about the nuts and bolts of the government he was elected to lead.

Trump is too preoccupied with a ridiculous campaign promise — the one about Mexico paying for The Wall — that he never should have made in the first place.