Monthly Archives: August 2020

national news

Wanting to respect POTUS

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

I am not proud to admit what I am about to admit … but here it comes.

I detest feeling as I do whenever Donald Trump shows his face on my TV screen. Accordingly, it is my sincere hope that we can — and will — elect a president who doesn’t turn me off the way the current president does.

Joe Biden has spoken at length and quite eloquently about the need to restore decency to the presidency. He wants to infuse the office with a sense of compassion that has been missing for about, oh, the past three-plus years.

Thus, when I see Donald Trump on my TV screen, my first impulse is to turn away. I no longer want to hear anything he has to say. I don’t trust him to tell me the truth. I figure when a politician loses my trust in his or her truthfulness then there is utterly no point in devoting a moment of my attention to anything he says.

I want to trust the president to tell me the truth. I want that individual — and I do hope it is Joe Biden after the next election in November — to speak candidly and honestly to me.

The Republican National Convention today nominated Trump for a second term as president. That’s the RNC’s call.

I am not going to listen to Donald Trump. My mind is made up. To be candid, Trump lost me the moment he declared his presidential candidacy in June 2015. I had harbored plenty of hope that some legitimate Republicans would defeat him in the GOP primary. I retained the hope that Hillary Clinton would defeat him in the general election.

Silly me.

I am left now to hope for the moment when respect returns to the presidency.

national news

Good luck, Mr. and Mrs. Conway

(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

I am not generally inclined to speak well of Kellyanne “Alternative Facts” Conway.

However, I want to extend sincere good wishes to her as she steps away from the White House, from politics, and from Donald J. Trump’s chaos to tend to family needs.

I have been watching and listening to Conway try to defend Donald Trump’s policy lunacy over the course of the past four years. I also have been listening with considerable interest the rants of her husband, high-powered lawyer George Conway, who co-founded the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. I long have wondered: How do these two individuals manage to stay married, given the vast political differences that they air almost daily. I know that their marriage is no one’s business, but they both have been heavily involved in public affairs over the years, so their status as public figures opens up aspects of their lives that they otherwise might prefer to keep private.

It is not being reported heavily with the news that Kellyanne Conway is stepping away from her policy role at the White House and George Conway from the Lincoln Project that they are seeking to mend their marriage and tend to their children’s needs. Indeed, their teenaged daughter Claudia said recently she is seeking “emancipation” from her parents. As National Public Radio reported: In a series of tweets that followed, she said that her mother’s job had “ruined my life” and that she and her father “agree on absolutely nothing,” politically.

As the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney once noted, “There is more to life than politics.”

I wish the Conways well.

national news

Let’s await the ‘phony’ and ‘fraud’

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Mitt Romney told the nation midway through the 2016 presidential campaign all about Donald John Trump.

The 2012 Republican presidential nominee spelled it out in a 17-minute speech. He said Donald Trump is a “phony” and a “fraud.” Yet the 2016 GOP nominee won that year’s presidential election by offering phony promises and running on a fraudulent background.

Trump is going to try to sell a nation once more on the phony, fraudulent past and seek to persuade Americans that what they have seen and heard is part of some mysterious Deep State “fake news” media conspiracy.

The Republican National Convention will unfold Monday in Charlotte, N.C. It will be a virtual event just as the Democratic Convention turned out to be.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden awaits the nomination of Donald Trump, who is going to tell the nation that life is good on his watch, that his administration is conquering the coronavirus pandemic, that the economy is just swell, that the United States enjoys the respect of the rest of the world and that he is protecting our troops who are waging war against international terrorists.

It’ll all be lies. He will lie and lie again and again.

The most astonishing aspect of his lying will be that about 40 percent of voting public will believe every lie he tells.

Donald Trump’s fraudulent term as president has been brought into the sharpest relief possible.

The economic collapse caused by the pandemic has wiped out every bit of job growth we have experienced over the past decade. Our troops face additional threats abroad because of the bounties that Russians are paying to Taliban terrorists for every American they kill on battlefields in Afghanistan. The pandemic itself is continuing to sicken and kill Americans daily. Most of the rest of the industrialized world has contained the virus and world leaders now look at Americans with pity.

Get ready for the convention/clown show that will unfold in Charlotte. I will grit my teeth and recall that Mitt Romney pegged Donald Trump perfectly when he warned us of what we would get were he ever elected president.

If only all of us had paid attention.

national news

Words of wisdom

I want to share the following message on my blog. It comes from a well-known actor/director/social activist. He makes his case for voting for Joe Biden for president of the United States.

Take a look at it. It’s a nicely crafted essay. I’m out:

“I have a lot of vivid memories of growing up in Los Angeles in the 1940s, but one in particular keeps coming back to me today, in these troubled times. I remember sitting with my parents — actually, my parents were sitting; I was lying on the floor, the way kids do — and listening to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt talking to us over the radio. He was talking to the nation, of course, not just to us, but it sure felt that way. He was personal and informal, like he was right there in our living room.
I was too young to follow much of what he was saying — something about World War II. But what I did understand was that this was a man who cared about our well-being. I felt calmed by his voice. It was a voice of authority and, at the same time, empathy. Americans were facing a common enemy — fascism — and FDR gave us the sense that we were all in it together. Even kids like me had a role to play: participating in paper drives, collecting scrap metal, doing whatever we could do. That’s what it was like to have a president with a strong moral compass. It guided him, gave him direction, and helped him point the nation toward a better future.
Maybe this strikes you as simple nostalgia. I’ve got a touch of that, sure (who doesn’t right now?). But I’m too focused on the future to sit around pining for the old days. For me, the power of FDR’s example is what it says about the kind of leadership America needs — and can have again, if we choose it.
But one thing is clear: Instead of a moral compass in the Oval Office, there’s a moral vacuum. Instead of a president who says we’re all in it together, we have a president who’s in it for himself. Instead of words that uplift and unite, we hear words that inflame and divide. When someone retweets (and then deletes) a video of a supporter shouting “white power” or calls journalists “enemies of the state,” when he turns a lifesaving mask against contagion into a weapon in a culture war, when he orders the police and the military to tear gas peaceful protestors so he can wave a Bible at the cameras, he sacrifices — again and again — any claim to moral authority.
Another four years of this would degrade our country beyond repair. The toll it’s taking is almost biblical: fires and floods, a literal plague upon the land, an eruption of hatred that’s being summoned and harnessed, by a leader with no conscience or shame. Four more years would accelerate our slide toward autocracy. It would be taken as free license to punish more so-called “traitors” and wage more petty vendettas — with the full weight of the Justice Department behind them. Four more years would mean open season on our environmental laws. The assault has been ongoing — it started with abandoning the historic agreement that the world made in Paris to combat climate change, and continued, just last month, with using the pandemic as cover to let industries pollute as they see fit. Four more years would bring untold damage to our planet — our home.
America is still a world power. But in the past four years, it has lost its place as a world leader. A second term would embolden enemies and further weaken our standing with our friends.
When and how did the United States of America become the Divided States of America? Polarization, of course, has deep roots and many sources. President Donald Trump didn’t create all of our divisions as Americans. But he has found every fault line in America and wrenched them wide open.
Without a moral compass in the Oval Office, our country is dangerously adrift. But this November, we can choose another direction. This November, unity and empathy are on the ballot. Experience and intelligence are on the ballot. Joe Biden is on the ballot, and I’m confident he will bring these qualities back to White House.
I don’t make a practice of publicly announcing my vote. But this election year is different. And I believe Biden was made for this moment. Biden leads with his heart. I don’t mean that in a soft and sentimental way. I’m talking about a fierce compassion — the kind that fuels him, that drives him to fight against racial and economic injustice, that won’t let him rest while people are struggling.
As FDR showed, empathy and ethics are not signs of weakness. They’re signs of strength. I think Americans are coming back to that view. Despite Trump — despite his daily efforts to divide us — I see much of the country beginning to reunite again, the way it did when I was a kid. You can see it in the peaceful protests of the past several weeks — Americans of all races and classes coming together to fight against racism. You can see it the ways that communities are pulling together in the face of this pandemic, even if the White House has left them to fend for themselves.
These acts of compassion and kindness make our country stronger. This November, we have a chance to make it stronger still — by choosing a president who is consistent with our values, and whose moral compass points toward justice.”
– Robert Redford, July 8, 2020
media news

A tragic metaphor

The picture attached to this blog post symbolizes something that is troubling to me on at least two levels: one of them is personal, the other speaks to a broader phenomenon.

It came to me today from a friend who is visiting Amarillo with her husband on a family matter. Hubby snapped the picture. I want to call your attention to the graffiti on the second floor of the structure.

The building used to house the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked for nearly 18 years as editorial page editor. I left the business in late August 2012. The corporate ownership changed hands a few years later and then the new owners vacated the building. They moved what was left of the newspaper operation into an office suite in a downtown bank tower.

What you see here is the rotting hulk of what used to house a once-proud community institution.

The personal impact on me is obvious. I went to the Texas Panhandle in January 1995 full of pi** and vinegar and ready to slay some dragons in my new surroundings. The newspaper had a proud tradition. It won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service — which is journalism’s highest award. I was proud to be part of that legacy. We didn’t win any more Pulitzer prizes during my time there, but I developed a lot of close friendships with colleagues and managed to eke out a modestly successful tenure during my time there.

None of us got into the business of chronicling a community’s story to make lots of money. We did it because of our commitment to the craft we pursued.

I had a lot of fun there and managed to embark on many fascinating assignments during my time.

So when I see this picture, my heart breaks on a deeply personal level. The property is up for sale. It’s been on the block for quite some time. I do not know how you repurpose an office building that once served as a newspaper office; the building next to it on the same block once housed the paper’s presses and distribution complex. Good luck with peddling that structure, too.

The picture symbolizes what has become of print journalism in communities all across the nation. Once-vibrant community institutions are being relegated to empty shells. They become targets of graffiti “artists” intent on making some sort of statement about … whatever.

Newspaper staffs are slashed. The paper charges whoever is left to cover a community with virtually no one available to actually do the work of reporting on and then writing what they learn.

Those who once depended on newspapers are turning to other media. I cannot vouch for the veracity of what is being disseminated. Some of it is valid. Some of it, well, is just crap.

I am happy to report that I have moved on, as have so many of my former colleagues. I am in a much better place now. I hope they are, too. The remains of the Amarillo Globe-News? The future for the building and the medium it once housed — to my way of thinking — look decidedly less promising.

I am saddened beyond measure.

national news

Who’s the lawless POTUS?

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(Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Let’s set the record straight on how we define lawlessness.

Steven Bannon has just been indicted on fraud charges related to the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign; he is the seventh member of Trump’s team to be indicted, to have pleaded guilty to criminal activity or convicted at trial.

Trump got a question from a reporter to explain why so many of these key associates have run afoul of the law.

Trump then blurted out the lie he keeps repeating about the Barack Obama administration. He called President Obama and Vice President Biden — Trump’s 2020 opponent — corrupt and “lawless.” He said the Obama administration “spied” on his campaign.

Hmm. The record, though, tells us that zero members of the Obama administration were indicted, convicted or pleaded guilty to criminal activity. Furthermore, the Justice Department on President Obama’s watch was reacting to reports that Russians were working with the Trump campaign while interfering with the 2016 election. A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report has just confirmed that very fact.

Lawlessness, Mr. President? Look inward.

national news

How to watch the RNC?

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It pains me greatly to ask this, but I must.

How in the world am I going to watch the Republican National Convention after having my spirits lifted from the Democratic National Convention?

The RNC is set to nominate the most loathsome individual I have seen in my lifetime to the office of president. They anointed Donald Trump their party’s nominee in 2016 and then he surprised practically every political pundit/analyst/observer on Earth by actually winning the election.

He is likely to deliver the same hideous sort of speech late in the week when he accepts the nomination a second time. The speakers will seek to paint this individual as something he most certainly is not: a statesman, a leader. He is nothing of the sort.

Indeed, when Democratic nominee Joe Biden pledged on Thursday to be a “president for all Americans,” my mind drifted immediately to the horror being brought at this moment to our friends and family members in California. Fires are threatening lives up and down the state.

Where is Donald Trump’s expression of support? When has he said he would devote all federal help possible to assist those Americans? Trump does not see himself, in my view, as their president. He is president only to the base that stands with him and his ghastly pronouncements.

I’ve never had to deal with this immense gulf between candidates of opposing parties competing for the presidency. To be candid, it makes me quite uncomfortable.

In 2008 and again in 2012, I watched the RNC with considerable interest as the GOP nominated, respectively, two fine men with stellar records of public service: the late John McCain and Mitt Romney.

In 2000 and 2004, I was able to watch the RNC nominate George W. Bush.

It is remarkable, indeed, to think that President Bush and Gov. Romney, two of the GOP’s three most recent nominees will not take part in this year’s virtual convention. Sen. McCain, were he around, certainly would want to stay far away from any political event having to do with Donald Trump.

I’ll suck it up and watch at least part of the RNC that’s coming up. However, I might have to clear the room of any objects I could throw at my TV.

national news

Birtherism takes new twist

The remarks of a desperate man are to be taken seriously, because there’s no tellin’ precisely what might fly out of his mouth.

Donald Trump went to Scranton, Pa., this week and offered a truly bizarre twist to the “birtherism” theory that has become all the rage — yet again — among right-wing politicians.

He said, according to the Huffington Post:

“He’d say he was born here,” Trump told listeners in Scranton. “But he left when he was like 8, 9 or 10. So he left 68 years ago, he left — a long time ago. So I view it differently. He wasn’t born here. He abandoned Scranton!”

Trump conceded: “His family had something to do with that, you know, his parents. But he left Scranton.”

Trump is talking about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who was born in Scranton, but left when his family moved to neighboring Delaware. Biden is proud of his Scranton roots and he mentions it often while campaigning for president.

But what the hell is up with Trump suggesting that Biden might not have been born there?

Someone might need to take Trump’s temperature. His desperation might be getting to him.

national news

Watched this boy with empathy

I couldn’t help but feel my heart pounding hard as I watched a 13-year-old boy tell the world about the kindness extended to him by Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Brayden Harrington has a stuttering issue he must confront every day. He delivered his remarks with supreme courage during the virtual Democratic Party Convention this week. He got most of his remarks out without a hitch. Not all of it, though.

Biden overcame a stuttering issue as he was coming of age. He would read poetry, forming words carefully to avoid getting caught up in a stutter. I admire his courage, too, in fighting through the debilitating impediment. I also will pray for the future progress of young Brayden as he makes his way through life.

I also would tell him, if given the chance, that he must prepare himself for more of the mistreatment I am certain he has endured already from his peers. I won’t call them his “friends,” because real friends wouldn’t subject him to the bullying and humiliation he likely will experience … and has experienced already.

I know how it goes. I felt it, too. I once had a serious stuttering problem. I cannot say it is totally eradicated. Words still trip me up on rare occasions. As a teenager — indeed, well into my high school years — I struggled with speaking, particularly in front of large groups of people.

Two of my classmates in high school heard me once stumble while trying to say my own last name during a class project. They just split a gut, man! For the rest of my high school years these two fellows would mimic that moment of supreme embarrassment.

Well, that was then. The here and now is quite different. I have conquered that demon … more or less. Oh, those two guys? One of them is now deceased. I saw the other one at my 50-year high school reunion in 2017. We chatted amicably as if nothing ever happened during the bad old days. I hope he reads this blog and recognizes himself in it.

Hey, I don’t hold any hard feelings toward him now. I damn sure did back then.

So, I salute young Brayden Harrington for standing before the entire world and speaking out on behalf of a politician who knows the battle he is enduring.

Could I ever do such a thing when I was 13 years of age?

Not on your life!

local news

Abbott threatens overreach

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is angry with the Austin City Council.

He is so angry that he is threatening to meddle into a level of government that is none of the governor’s business. He said the city’s decision to “defund” its police department might result in the state imposing a property tax freeze, which would deprive the city of any sort of budgeting flexibility, which is essential to the governing body.

C’mon, governor! What happened to your belief in local control?

The judgment on whether the city council acted wisely in defunding the police department and reallocating funds to human service programs is up to the voters of the city. It is not the governor’s call!

The council voted to cut $150 million from the police department’s $434 million annual budget. Is that the right call? It’s not for me to decide, or for the governor, either. The decision should come from the city’s voting public.

This is a reactionary decision on the part of the governor. The Dallas Morning News published an editorial that takes appropriate note of the governor’s decision to deploy Department of Public Safety troopers to cities to help fight spikes in crime, which he did this past year in Dallas. That’s all fine and is in keeping with the governor’s commitment to protecting the safety of Texans.

The DMN editorial also points out that budget matters belong solely to the city. The governor should butt out! Read the editorial here.

The governor should concentrate on issues that are relevant to the constitutional authority invested in his office, not seek to meddle in matters that belong exclusively to our cities.