Monthly Archives: February 2020

national news

A resounding ‘no!’ to a far-left ideologue to succeed Trump

I hope my views are clear by now about my preference for the next president of the United States.

If not, then I’ll lay it out in plain English: I do not want the next president to be a fringe ideologue with an overly aggressive agenda that has no prayer of being enacted.

That would rule, according to what we’ve witnessed to date, the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, two U.S. senators who’ve become champions of the Democratic Party’s progressive movement.

That would leave in no particular order, say, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. I won’t include Tulsi Gabbard and Deval Patrick in that mix, because I think Gabbard needs to drop out of the race and Patrick, well, he isn’t making any noise at all.

My strong preference is to elect someone who can succeed Donald Trump who will be able to forge bipartisan coalitions, who knows how to legislate, who has a deep understanding of government and who adheres to policies that reflect more of a mainstream point of view.

The Democratic nominee, first off, needs to be able to defeat Trump this fall. I don’t know yet how he or she will accomplish that feat. It remains a tall order, given the immense power of presidential incumbency. I have maintained over many election cycles that incumbent presidents remind me of heavyweight boxing champions: To defeat an incumbent you’ve got to knock him out.

Will any of these contenders measure up to the huge task at hand?

In a normal election year, with a normal incumbent seeking re-election, it would appear to be more attainable than one might think. Trump’s campaign rally riffs are intense studies in incoherence. This individual cannot string cogent sentences together. I listen to him, try to grasp what he is saying and damn near every time I come away scratching my head, wondering: What the hell did this guy just say?

Donald Trump is far from an ordinary politician. He plays to his base exclusively. He fires ’em up with his untruths, his insults and innuendo. He makes patently outrageous statements that in a prior era would have doomed any normal politician. Talk about a Teflon politician. This guy embodies the description.

I want the next president to restore a healthy measure of respectability to the nation’s highest, most exalted office.

I want someone who knows how to govern and someone who understands that good government requires compromise. A fire-breathing extremist does not fit that important description.

national news

Give him a break on ‘stop and frisk’

I want to cut Michael Bloomberg some slack on the grief he is getting over a policy he once endorsed but over which he has since expressed regret.

Yep, that would be “stop and frisk,” a law enforcement policy that Bloomberg favored when he was New York mayor.

He’s now running for president of the United States as a Democrat. He served as NYC mayor as a Republican. Between then and now he declared himself to be an independent.

Whatever, the stop and frisk policy he once endorsed empowered the cops to, um, stop individuals and then search them for, oh, weapons and drugs and other assorted illegal possessions. It was a badly implemented policy, targeting racial minorities and arresting them at rates that far exceeded anything considered reasonable or rational.

Bloomberg has said he’s sorry about the policy. He has owned his mistake. He says he would do things much differently now were he able and has pledged, if elected as president, to lead the charge to end racial injustice in this country.

That is good enough for me.

But not for some Bloomberg critics, who refuse to accept his expressions of regret at face value. They want more, although precisely what they demand is unclear to me.

And, of course, we can look forward — more than likely — to Donald Trump climbing on the bash Bloomberg bandwagon over this policy … never mind that Trump endorsed it, too, but has never said a single word of regret over the manner in which the policy was carried out.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/09/stop-and-frisk-lets-hold-on/

I am still not sure whether Bloomberg is the guy whom Democrats should endorse in the still-developing party presidential primary battle. The issue of stop and frisk, though, is a non-starter.

The man made a mistake. He owns the mistake. He vows to do better. That should be the end of it.

legal news, national news

How much more is there to Barr’s dispute with POTUS?

Oh, how I want to believe Attorney General William Barr’s declaration that Donald Trump’s tweeting about pending criminal justice matters makes it “impossible” for the AG to do his job.

It’s just that whenever anything emerges with Donald Trump’s fingerprints on it, one must look for the rest of the story.

Barr told ABC News that he wants the president to stop tweeting about pending cases. He said the president is interfering with Justice Department officials doing their job.

Barr also said that his decision to recommend a lighter sentence for Trump pal Roger Stone than the one that prosecutors had sought had nothing to do with Trump’s tweet that called the prosecutors’ recommendation a “miscarriage of justice.”

However, I am left to wonder whether that is the whole truth. He could make that declaration without acknowledging any sort of pre-arranged agreement with Trump … correct?

I want to get back to the key point, which is that if Trump is going to continue to tweet and commend openly about matters that require discretion, that Barr’s job will remain an impossibility.

What does the AG do? He should just quit. Walk away. Go back to private practice. Leave the chaos and confusion to the next sucker who is willing to take the thankless job of reporting to the current president of the United States.

I had hoped that William Barr would be the grownup in a Cabinet full of sycophants and toadies. He has proven me wrong. Barr could restore some of that hope simply by quitting.

national news

Hey, Mr. AG: POTUS isn’t going to stop tweeting; so just resign

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has laid down an important marker.

He said in an ABC News interview that Donald John Trump’s tweets make it “impossible for me to do my job.” He added that “I think it’s time to stop tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.”

Yep, the AG said that. He told ABC correspondent Pierre Thomas that very thing.

Trump has been tweeting about Justice Department recommendations that his pal Roger Stone should get a seven- to nine-year prison term for lying to Congress and for witness intimidation.

He also has been chiding the federal judge presiding over the case. The president has been interfering directly in the criminal justice process.

So, Barr says the president’s interference makes it “impossible” for him to continue as attorney general?

Here’s a thought, Mr. AG: You should grant yourself and the rest of us a profound public service … by resigning. 

local news, political news

Facing an electoral quandary

I have been “chatting” via social media with a longtime friend who has told me of her intention to vote in the Republican Party primary next month. She lives in the Golden Triangle of Texas and tells me she must vote in the GOP primary because of the plethora of local races that mean much to her.

I get that. I also have told her that I intend to vote in the Democratic primary because I have not yet built the familiarity my friend has with her community.

She’s lived in Orange County for decades. I have lived in Collin County for a little more than a year. I am not proud to acknowledge that my familiarity with local contests isn’t yet up to speed. However, I must go where my instincts lead me.

They are leading me to cast my ballot for races involving national and statewide contests.

We’re going to cast our votes for president on March 3. Super Tuesday’s lineup of primary states includes Texas and its big prize of delegates to both parties’ nominating conventions.

I am not going to restate the obvious, which involves my vote for president, or simply that I will never cast a ballot for the current POTUS. My chore now is to examine the Democratic field for the candidate of my choice.

My inclination is to support Joseph R. Biden Jr. However, it is not clear at this writing whether he’ll be a viable candidate when the Texas primary rolls around. He must win in South Carolina. The former VP is losing African-American support that he says is his “firewall” to protect his candidacy from total collapse.

Then we have the U.S. Senate race and the U.S. House contest. Yes, the impeachment battle plays a factor in my vote. GOP Sen. John Cornyn, whom I actually like personally, has been a profound disappointment to me with his vote to acquit Donald Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. What’s more, my first-term congressman, Republican Van Taylor, also disappointed me when he voted against impeaching Trump of those high crimes and misdemeanors.

My attention is focused, therefore, on the bigger stage.

I will need to live through another election cycle to familiarize myself with local issues and candidates sufficiently to cast my vote with any semblance of intelligence. Hey, given that I live in a county that’s even more Republican-leaning than my friend’s home county in the Golden Triangle, I understand the need to get up to speed.

I will do so in due course.

military news

POTUS’s incessant feud with brass shows his own ignorance

Donald Trump’s current feud with former White House chief of staff John Kelly only underscores what most of us have known all along.

The president keeps saying how much he respects the military but keeps demonstrating at every possible turn how he manages to disrespect those who make command decisions.

Kelly is a retired Marine Corps four-star general. He ran the Department of Homeland Security before he moved to the White House post. He didn’t last long before Trump fired him. Now he’s going after Gen. Kelly for speaking up on behalf of an Army lieutenant colonel who acted as he was trained to do when he heard something he perceived to be illegal; in Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s case, he heard the president ask a foreign government leader for a personal political favor.

A year ago, Trump fired off an angry tweet criticizing another highly decorated officer, retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal. He said McChrystal had a “big dumb mouth.” He had criticized Trump’s sudden decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan, ,which is still in the midst of a war with the Taliban and other terrorists.

Trump has disparaged other premier military men, such as former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who happens to be an Army lieutenant general and a noted military scholar.

Let us remember what he declared during the 2016 presidential campaign that he knows “more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me.” He doesn’t know more. He doesn’t anything about the Islamic State, or al-Qaeda.

And speaking of al-Qaeda, how can one forget when he said that the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden should have occurred before it did. He then launched a brief feud with retired Admiral William McRaven, the former head of the Special Operations Command and under whose watch the SEALs along with CIA commandos took out the al-Qaeda leader.

What is most galling about all of this, of course, is the manner in which Trump avoided military service during the Vietnam War. He managed to find a family doctor who signed off on something called “bone spurs,” enabling young Donald to obtain a medical deferment that kept him out of uniform.

Yes, all of that rubs many of us who did serve in that war the wrong way. It also rubs many of us raw the way he continues to disparage brilliant and courageous military officers who saw fit to thrust themselves into harm’s way while the commander in chief chose to stay far away.

Disgusting.

local news

By golly, there is honesty among motor vehicle ‘techs’

I feel compelled to share this bit of good news that fell on me this morning. It involves my three-quarter-ton pickup and a service technician who fixed it.

My story began Wednesday morning. I was driving home from a meeting in McKinney. The rain was pouring. I was traveling north along the frontage road next to U.S. Highway 75 when I drove the truck through some standing water, which splashed over the hood the truck.

I continued on. About a minute later, the “check engine” light lit up on my dashboard control panel.

Hmm. What’s that about? The light stayed on as I made my way home to Princeton.

We awoke this morning. My wife and I drove the truck to the gym where we work out daily. The light was still on. “I’m going to take the truck in this morning to have it looked at,” I told her.

So I did. I drove to the Dodge-Jeep dealership in McKinney where I get the truck serviced. The service advisor met me in the service drive. I told him what I had. He summoned the service tech from the garage. The tech said he would reset a sensor he suspected had gotten wet.

He took the truck to the back. He reset the sensor. He returned the truck about five minutes later.

“You’re good to go,” he said. The sensor got cranky and lit up when it got soaked by the rain water.

“Is there a charge for this?” I asked. “Nope,” he said. “Just let me know if it acts up again.”

Life is good.

national news

What? AG is showing spunk, actual integrity?

What in the name of judicial integrity has gotten into U.S. Attorney General William Barr?

The AG consented to an interview with ABC News and criticized Donald John Trump for commenting on pending judicial cases, for criticizing federal judges, for using his Twitter account to set policy.

When pressed by ABC News correspondent Pierre Thomas about how the president will react to being criticized by a member of the Cabinet, Barr said he will resist being “bullied” by anyone, and that includes the president of the United States.

Trump has been on a Twitter tirade of late, criticizing former White House chief of staff John Kelly over the ex-chief’s criticism of Trump over his handling of firing Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and other matters relating to the Ukraine matter that led to the House impeachment of Trump.

Now comes the attorney general, who’s been a disappointment to many of us who had hoped he would be the grownup among Trump sycophants. He has proved to be little more than a Trump toadie … at least until right about now!

Barr is saying what he should have been saying all along, that Trump is behaving badly and is putting the country in dire jeopardy with his irresponsible assertions via Twitter about pending legal matters. The president’s interference in the Roger Stone sentencing recommendation from DOJ prosecutors is just the latest example.

Stone faces a prison sentence after a jury convicted him of lying under oath and intimidating witnesses related to the Russia election attack probe. DOJ attorneys recommended seven to nine years in the slammer. Trump called the recommendation a “miscarriage of justice”; Barr responded by reducing the recommendation.

My sense, though, after hearing his ABC interview, is that he doesn’t like Trump meddling in these matters.

State news, Uncategorized

Hoping the Legislature wises up to Empower Texans’ trickery

Empower Texans is a political action committee that has tremendous sway in the Texas Legislature, which at the moment comprises many legislators who adhere to Empower Texans’ extreme right-wing dogma.

We’ve got 181 legislators in both chambers, many of whom think Empower Texans speak for millions of Texans and deserve a special place at the legislative table.

The cabal of zealots deserves nothing of the sort.

My hope for the 2021 Legislature, which convenes next January, is that the legislative leadership — particularly in the House of Representatives — keeps its distance from Michael Quinn Sullivan’s PAC.

It’s not as though Sullivan hasn’t earned legislators’ scorn. Witness what he did to soon-to-be former House Speaker Dennis Bonnen. He and Bonnen had a “secret” meeting. They agreed that Bonnen would provide the names of 10 Republican lawmakers that Empower Texans could work to defeat in the 2020 election. Sullivan recorded the meeting without telling Bonnen. Then he spilled the beans on the speaker, who at first denied saying the mean things he said about his GOP colleagues. The denial lasted right up until the moment Sullivan produced the audio recording.

As they say … Oops!

Sullivan is untrustworthy. So, too, is Empower Texans, which Sullivan runs. Yet the PAC continues to throw its weight around. It seeks to demand that local legislators follow Empower Texans’ agenda.

I want Empower Texans to be put in its place. I want Michael Quinn Sullivan, who has launched efforts against legislators I happen to know and respect, to cease playing an outsized role in determining the Legislature’s political course.

He won’t bow out voluntarily. It then falls on legislative leaders to exert the power they possess to keep Sullivan and Empower Texans at arm’s length.

national news

Kelly vs. Trump: Who’s more trustworthy?

Donald John Trump is engaging in a verbal skirmish with another of his top former advisers.

The foe this time is a decorated combat veteran, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, a Gold Star parent whose son was killed in Afghanistan, a gentleman who served as White House chief of staff: John Kelly.

Gen. Kelly has come to the defense of Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, whom Trump fired after he testified to the House about concerns he had over the phone call Trump made to the Ukraine president. This was the call in which Trump asked Ukraine for a political favor. Vindman said the nature of the conversation worried him.

Kelly said Vindman was following military protocol when he reported his concern to his superior officers.

Kelly, in an article in Atlantic, had questioned the president’s decisions relating to North Korea and has challenged Trump’s description of immigrants as murderers and rapists.

Trump’s response has been to say that Kelly can’t keep his mouth shut.

Hmm. Who am I to believe? An honorable Marine who spent his adult life serving the public and defending this nation against its enemies? Or do I believe an admitted philanderer, a man who couldn’t tell the truth under any circumstances, and someone who spent his entire adult life seeking to enrich himself, quite often at others’ expense?

I believe I will stand with the general on this one.