Monthly Archives: August 2020

Sports news

No football this fall

If you live in places like, oh, Commerce or Canyon or Kingsville or Wichita Falls in Texas, and you planned to attend a college football game on a Saturday afternoon or evening … I have some bad news.

You’ll have to wait. You might be able to attend a game in the spring. Or perhaps later in 2021.

The Lone Star Conference, with 18 colleges in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, has declared that most outdoor sports this fall have been delayed. Yep, it’s the pandemic doing its dirty work here.

The LSC has made the decision to allow football teams to practice, but just not play games for real.

In a press release issued today, the LSC said: Cross country will compete in the fall as scheduled. Additionally, golf and tennis are permitted to compete in their non-championship segments in the fall.  No other outside competition will be allowed.
 
After extensive discussion, which included a review of the requirements set by the NCAA Board of Governors earlier this week, the council made the difficult decision to postpone due to the challenges of COVID-19.

… Football, soccer, volleyball and basketball, which are classified as high contact risk sports by the NCAA resocialization principles, can practice during the fall under all applicable NCAA Division II rules, but not compete until the spring.

Those “challenges,” indeed, are profound and must not be trifled with. Accordingly, I want to applaud the Lone Star Conference for putting the health of its student-athletes, its fans, the family members and friends of all those who would be exposed to potential infection at the top of their priority list.

The next season awaits, no matter when it begins.

International news

Russians are at it again … imagine that!

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(Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Russia has its favorite American political candidate. His name is Donald J. Trump. Russia is doing precisely what Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, said it would do: attack our electoral system just as it did in 2016.

Is Donald Trump going to express any outrage over it? Is he going to meet with Republicans and Democrats in Congress seeking to find meaningful sanctions to levy against Russia?

No and no.

What in the name of electoral sanctity does it take for the Trumpkin Corps to wake up to the reality that their guy poses an existential threat to our democratic way of life?

He invited the Russians to find Hillary Clinton’s emails during the 2016 campaign; the Russians obliged. Trump stood with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and openly denigrated U.S. intelligence conclusions that Russia interfered in 2016; he sided with Putin. Robert Mueller got the task of investigating all of that and determined that Russia had attacked our election and said it would do so again. He was right. Trump’s response has been to disparage Mueller’s findings.

Trump hasn’t yet said a single critical word about Putin’s chicanery. He spoke on the phone with the Russian strongman, but didn’t bring up the issue of Russian electoral interference … or the issue of Russian goons placing bounties on the lives of American service personnel killed in battle against the Taliban.

Where I come from that is called “dereliction of duty.”

And yet, the Trump faithful continues to give him a pass. Whatever they might feel privately they keep strictly to themselves. The public outrage is nowhere to be seen or heard.

Donald Trump has become the most dangerous existential threat to the nation he was elected to govern. The Russians know it and, in my view, that is precisely the reason they are seeking to work on behalf of his re-election.

religious news

Will this guy get ‘well wishes’ from POTUS?

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

How do you suppose this story is going to play out?

Jerry Falwell Jr. has been forced to take indefinite leave from his post as president and chancellor of Liberty University. Why? Because he was photographed with his pants unzipped while horsing around with a woman who is not his wife.

According to National Public Radio:

Falwell told the Lynchburg, Va., radio station WLNI on Wednesday that the photo, which was later removed, was taken in “just in good fun” during a costume party on vacation. He said the woman in the photo was his wife’s assistant.

“It was weird,” Falwell told the interviewer. “She’s pregnant, so she couldn’t get her pants zipped. I had on a pair of jeans I hadn’t worn in a long time, so I couldn’t get mine zipped either. So I just put my belly out like hers.”

Uh, huh …

This is a big deal for a couple of major reasons. One of them is that Liberty University is a well-known Christian school founded by Falwell late father, who once published a book that said President and Hillary Clinton were complicit in the deaths of several key aides and friends.

The other reason is that Falwell Jr. is a big-time supporter of Donald J. Trump. He spoke on Trump’s behalf at the 2016 Republican National Convention and has said repeatedly that God favors Trump’s re-election.

So, what is going to be the upshot of this story?

Falwell’s indefinite leave likely means he will be gone from Liberty U. forever. He’ll be fired eventually over conduct that is quite unbecoming for the head of a major faith-based institution of higher learning.

Trump’s response? Will he say he barely knows Falwell? He’s used that dodge before,  regarding convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, to cite just one example. Never mind all those pictures of Trump and Epstein chumming it up at wild New York City parties.

Or will he simply, um, “wish him well”?

local news

What became of this movement?

It happens all the time.

A controversy erupts in a community; residents get angry and they demand change; they vow to stick with it until change occurs.

Then it all sort of just, oh, goes away.

I think that is what happened in Amarillo, where more than a year ago the community seethed over the forced resignation of a volleyball coach. Kori Clements quit after a year coaching the Amarillo High School girls volleyball team, one of the more vaunted programs in the entire state.

She cited pressure from a school trustee, Renee McCown, who pressured Clements to play her daughter more. The Amarillo Independent School District administration didn’t back the coach. Parents formed a “transparency coalition” to get to the bottom of what happened.

The trustee in question resigned from the board, which accepted Clements’ resignation without comment.

Observers from near and far raised issues, asked questions. I was one of them. The parents coalition sought answers from Superintendent Doug Loomis. To my knowledge, there haven’t many answers forthcoming.

And so life goes on. Of course, the AISD is dealing with a pandemic these days, which likely shuffles every other issue — no matter how big or small — to the darkest back shelf possible.

I look periodically at the parents coalition Facebook page, searching for news on its search for transparency. Don’t see any progress, unless there’s been some secret-handshake deal struck behind everyone’s back.

My curiosity at times does get the better of me. This is one of those times.

The Clements story didn’t end well for the former coach. It bothered me greatly that a trustee meddled in an educator’s job and that she was allowed to get away with it. I hope the former coach has embarked on a new life journey.

As for the school district, I hope the folks who run the public school system have adopted a policy that doesn’t tolerate the kind of interference that prompted the tempest in the first place.

national news

This question is vital

David Gergen has hobnobbed at the center of power for decades, going back all the way during the Ford administration.

He has served Republican and Democratic presidents. The CNN political analyst has crystallized the Big Question that Joe Biden must be able to answer as he ponders who he wants to run with him on the Democratic ticket against Donald Trump. According to CNN.com, it goes like this:

But the Biden campaign should be paying the most attention to this question: If history calls, will his vice president have the capacity and talent to become a first-class president?

There you have it. Compatibility with the presidential nominee is important; so is personal chemistry; same for whether she will be a political asset.

The threshold question must be whether the VP is ready from Day One to step into the big job.

Look, let’s be candid. Joe Biden will be 78 years of age were he to take the oath of office next January. He will be the oldest president by a good bit ever to assume the office. That does not mean that the vice presidential nominee should start preparing for the job.

Lyndon Johnson was selected by John Kennedy to run for VP in 1960. Kennedy was 43 years old, the youngest man ever elected president. Fate intervened on Nov. 22, 1963. JFK chose well, as it turned out.

Joe Biden will have to choose equally well as he selects the person to run with him in what figures to be the nastiest, filthiest campaign in modern history … maybe of all time!

The other stuff is window dressing. The first and last criterion must be presidential readiness.

Read Gergen’s essay here.

The man knows his stuff. Pay attention to the advice this guy offers, Mr. Biden.

national news

Trump’s boorishness is beyond … boorish

I am running out of ways to express my disgust and utter astonishment over Donald Trump’s public utterances.

I look at some of the public opinion polling that puts Trump at a 42 percent — give or take — approval rating and I wonder: How in the name of sanity does anyone continue to stand with this idiot?

Trump’s passel of platitudes now includes some hideous accusations about Joe Biden being against God, against the Second Amendment, how he has forsaken African-Americans, that he is a far-left socialist.

Trump sounds like someone who thinks he is going to lose the election in November.

Then he tells reporters that he might not accept the election results, which he says will be the result of the “most corrupt election in history.” What if the Russians interfere this year as they did in 2016 and try to persuade Americans to re-elect Trump? Then it’s OK, he will say.

Trump’s hideous record, exemplified by the reprehensible initial non-response to the coronavirus pandemic, only confirms what I and other critics have said all along … which is that this guy cannot lead the nation. He has no understanding of the role he took an oath to perform.

He is left now to fabricate issues against which he will run.

Trump’s incessant lying, demagoguery, posturing, fraudulent characterizations of his record have revealed to the world that the United States made a terrible mistake in electing this clown in 2016.

My goodness, we have to correct that mistake.

national news

Trump chides Biden on race matters? Really?

Donald J. “Narcissist in Chief” Trump’s utter lack of self-awareness is on full display … once again!

Joe Biden made what one could call a bit of a “gaffe” when he suggested that Latinos are a more “diverse” ethnic population than African-Americans. The presumed Democratic presidential nominee then “clarified” his remarks, offering what amounted to an apology.

Trump’s response? He went on Twitter to suggest that Biden has totally disparaged African-Americans. Now, think about that for a moment.

First of all, Biden did something that is foreign to Trump. He sought to walk back what to many seemed like an insensitive remark. Would The Donald ever in a zillion years do such a thing? Of course not! Second of all, for Donald Trump — whose relationship with ethnic and racial minorities is built on mutual distrust and hostility — to make political hay over this nothing burger is laughable on its face.

Therefore, I conclude that not only is Trump the nation’s supreme narcissist, he also lacks any semblance of self-awareness over how others might perceive anything that flies out of his pie hole.

Keep spewing that idiocy, Donald.

media news

Allow this boast

2 Comments

I shouldn’t boast, given that I criticize Donald J. Trump for doing so.

Just bear with me for a moment.

I have just logged the 402nd consecutive day posting a blog on High Plains Blogger. I happen to believe that’s boast-worthy.

You might ask: Why?

It’s because I like to think I have a lot to say. It’s importance, of course, is open to interpretation. Much of my blog involves political and policy matters; less of it involves life experience, but I do consider that important, too. I also have series of posts on the blog: I talk about retirement and I also discuss adventures my wife and I have with Toby the Puppy; and I also look back from time to time on the full-time journalism career that concluded nearly eight years ago.

On that last point, my journalism endeavor hasn’t ended completely. I wrote for a public TV station in Amarillo for a time after leaving print journalism; I also wrote for a CBS-TV affiliate, also in Amarillo. Since moving to the Metroplex, I have become a freelance blogger for KETR-FM public radio at Texas A&M University-Commerce. And … I am a freelance reporter for a group of weekly newspapers, writing chiefly for the Farmersville Times.

Through it all, I have kept firing away on my blog. It’s what I do.

Some folks tell me I am a “prolific” blogger. I take that as a supreme compliment. I have help in that regard. The world is bursting with news on which to comment. It’s been that way since, oh, roughly about the time 9/11 occurred. That event changed the world and brought bloggers and other commentators like me along with it.

So, this blog continues apace. I am thrilled to be able to contribute some small perspective to the huge world of opinion.

Hey, it beats working!

local news

Mayor moves on … stays put

BLOGGER’S NOTE: This item was posted originally on KETR-FM’s website.

Princeton Mayor John-Mark Caldwell only thought he was resigning from the City Council after moving to Rockwall.

It turns out, according to the city’s legal counsel, Caldwell is required to stay in office until after the next election, which occurs on Nov. 3. That’s what the state requires, so Caldwell must remain in place, gavel in hand, running City Council meetings.

As the Princeton Herald reported: The law requiring that a public official continue serving until a replacement is installed was explained by City Attorney Clark McCoy at the … July 27 regular city council meeting. “This is known as the holdover in office provision,” McCoy said. He explained that the law is in place to assure continuity in office and that is the duty of the officeholder to continue serving.

This is even though when he adjourns the meetings, he goes home to the next county over.

I find that rather weird. But that’s just me, I suppose.

Princeton does have a mayor pro tem, Councilman Steve Deffibaugh who, according to the statutes governing the city, can serve as mayor in the absence of the elected individual. Princeton, I should point out, doesn’t have a home-rule charter, and is governed under “general law” established by the state. It well might be that had Princeton been able to approve a charter — which it has failed to do in four municipal elections — there wouldn’t be a problem.

Caldwell had tendered his resignation after it was revealed he had moved to Rockwall. He said when he submitted it that he intended to stay in office until his term expired in 2021, but then changed his mind. It now turns out that he has to stay for a little while longer anyway.

I am just one Princeton resident among the 12,000 or so who live here, but my thought is that the mayor pro tem ought to grab the gavel and run the council meetings, allowing the outgoing mayor to go on his way, establishing a new life in his new community. I should point out that Princeton’s mayor doesn’t vote on issues before the council, except to break a tie. It’s that general law thing that prohibits a mayoral vote.

The election is coming up. Filing for the seat is still open. One candidate has filed: former Princeton Independent School District Superintendent Philip Anthony. My hunch is that Anthony will be the overwhelming favorite to be elected to fill out the rest of Caldwell’s mayoral term.

I am a bit baffled, though, as to why Caldwell just can’t walk away as he intended to do when he turned in his resignation.

religious news

Hurt the Bible, hurt God?

Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Hmm. I have to wonder whether Donald J. “Demagogue in Chief” Trump is campaigning like a man who believes he is going to lose his job as president of the United States.

He said today that Joe Biden wants to “hurt the Bible, hurt God.”

I am shaking my noggin in utter disbelief.

How do I assess what flew out of Trump’s mouth?

For instance, how does a worldly politician “hurt God”? Well, I won’t go there. You get my drift. The Almighty is beyond being “hurt” by a mere human being.

However, I do want to discuss the utter astonishment at hearing Donald Trump — of all people — accuse a political foe of denigrating issues and matters of sincere faith.

Joe Biden is a lifelong Catholic. He smudges his forehead with ash on Ash Wednesday. He goes to Mass regularly. He takes communion. Trump? His association with matters of faith is, um, for show only. I need only to point you directly to that hideous photo op across the street from the White House a few weeks ago when Trump stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, holding an upside-down Bible. He didn’t go into the house of worship. Oh, no. He stood outside to have pictures taken.

Donald Trump has no basis on which he can criticize another individual’s religious faith. Donald Trump has never sought forgiveness for his sins; he has never admitted to mistakes; he once referred to a New Testament book as “Two Corinthians.”

Trump’s desperation has become evident as he stands in public places and says things such as what he said today about Joe Biden.

Consider, too, that he said Biden is “against guns. He is against God.” Think of the idiocy right there. Guns and God juxtaposed in adjoining sentences.

When I discuss the incoherence Trump displays while speaking to the nation, this is precisely to what I am referring. To think, therefore, that Trump brags about “acing” a cognitive exam, which is given to determine whether someone is afflicted with dementia.

So, we are witnessing Donald Trump trying to find something, anything, to hang on a foe who at this moment seems headed for a smashing victory over a president who doesn’t have a clue about the job he was elected to perform.