Monthly Archives: September 2021

national news, Sports news

Let anthem stand on its own

The older I get the more of a fuddy-duddy I become.

There. I’ve admitted it. What caused this admission? It’s the inclusion of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at professional football games which is now being sung alongside the National Anthem.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” has become a sort of de facto “black national anthem.” It’s a lovely song. I don’t know the words, but I do hear it on occasion and I like the melody.

Do we need to sing it at pro football games as a statement that we recognize the injustice being done to African Americans to this very day? I don’t think so.

I prefer to sing only the National Anthem — the “Star Spangled Banner,” if you will — at sports events. How come?

We have one National Anthem. Just a single tune. Its lyrics were penned by Francis Scott Key in the early 19th century. It stands as the song we all learned as children. We sang it in school. We sing it today at public meetings and, yes, at sporting events.

I don’t want to dilute the meaning of the national anthem, which proclaims we are the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” Do I ignore the injustice that continues to occur? Do I accept that some Americans are treated unfairly? That they face discrimination? No! I reject all of that!

However, this notion that we sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” alongside the “Star Spangled Banner” just doesn’t feel right.

OK. I’m a white guy. I also am a fuddy-duddy. Deal with it!

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local news

It’s all about the turnout

Allow me this brief moment to express my frustration over what I expect will occur in early November.

My neighbors and I are going to vote for Princeton City Council members, for Princeton Independent School District trustees and for a special municipal referendum calling for the formation of a home-rule charter committee.

The frustration, which I expect fully to experience, will be in the abysmal voter turnout.

Mayor Brianna Chacon, who is running for re-election to a full term, is urging us to vote. She laments the historically low turnout for these municipal elections. It well might fall into the single-digit percentage of eligible voters who actually cast ballots on Nov. 2. That stinks to high heaven, man!

How many times must I say the same thing? Which is that local elections bring the most tangible impact on us as voters. We don’t care! Or so the dismal turnouts would suggest. City Councils set our tax policy; they determine the level of police and fire protection we receive; they set policy for trash pickup; they spend money to repair our streets.

The home-rule charter committee decision has me particularly juiced up. Princeton’s population exploded between the 2010 and 2020 census; we now are home to more than 18,000 inhabitants. Texas law grants cities with populations of 5,000 or greater the right to seek home-rule charter governance; Princeton currently is governed as a “general law” city, adhering to laws written by the Legislature.

We gotta change that, folks!

I don’t want to see a miserable voter turnout make that decision. We need to have everyone casting ballots who is eligible to do so.

Are we clear? Good! See you at the polls!

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International news

Biden seeks to reassure allies, warn foes

Joseph R. Biden Jr. stood before the United Nations today and delivered the kind of speech Americans — and those around the world — hadn’t heard delivered from a U.S. president in some time.

He spoke of diplomacy, of global warming, of human rights, of an end to U.S. warfare. President Biden delivered a reasoned, rationale, coherent speech to the U.N. General Assembly that was devoid of name-calling — such as “Little Rocket Man” — and some of the curious statements that would fly out of the mouth of Biden’s presidential predecessor.

To be sure, the current president has a heaping plate full of trouble. We have a refugee crisis on our southern border. We are still trying to finish extricating ourselves fully from Afghanistan. The nation is battling a COVID-19 pandemic that many of us thought was whipped four months ago.

To hear the president’s tone, though, in a speech to the world’s No. 1 diplomatic body seems to signal a return to normal diplomatic procedure, the kind of thing he promised when he ran for president in 2020.

Yes, President Biden is struggling at home. The political forces that keep digging in against him are fierce, determined and dogged in their effort to torpedo everything the wants to do.

However, I remain determined to offer my support in the efforts this president is making to repair the wreckage left by his predecessor.

Today’s speech at the U.N. took us another step toward that end.

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International news

Biden gets blame for this, too?

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President Biden no doubt knew he was jumping into a briar patch when he decided to seek the presidency in 2020.

Now he’s getting pilloried for something he couldn’t possibly control, which is the flood of refugees from Haiti; they are congregating on the U.S. border near Del Rio, Texas. The United States is sending thousands of them back to Haiti.

Wait, though, for the criticism that is going to come flowing toward the Biden administration.

Why didn’t they anticipate this flood of immigrants? Why are they being mistreated by border and immigration officers? How can they allow this monumental tragedy unfold?

I will continue to stand with the president as he seeks to deal with this newest crisis on our border.

Haitians are fleeing their country, which was torn apart with the assassination of its president. Then came that killer earthquake. I guess one would want out of a nation with no stable government, let alone a stable infrastructure to withstand Earth’s awesome power.

Where do they go? To the U.S. of A.!

“We are very concerned that Haitians who are taking this irregular migration path are receiving false information that the border is open or the temporary protected status is available,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. “I want to make sure that it is known that this is not the way to come to the United States.”

Border patrol criticized for treatment of Haitian migrants in Del Rio | The Texas Tribune

President Biden is getting pilloried, pounded and pummeled these days for the crisis that erupted virtually without warning. How in the world does one prepare for such a monstrous development?

Joe Biden sought the presidency twice before finally winning the office in 2020. He has been involved with politics long enough — seemingly since The Flood — to know that the realm is fraught with peril. I spent the previous four years lamenting the fecklessness of a president who didn’t listen to any of the advisers with whom he surrounded himself. He sought to live up to the mindless boast that “I, alone can fix” whatever problems arose.

President Biden isn’t wired that way. He has surrounded himself with critical thinkers and individuals seasoned in the nuanced world of international relations.

They all have a huge problem on their hands at the moment. They need to find a solution quickly. If they fail, then they will deserve the pounding they are sure to receive.

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national news

He put us in ‘Peril’

The older I get the harder it becomes for me to sit down with a book and read it from front to back non-stop. Yep, even those so-called page-turners.

That all said and understood (I presume), I ordered a new non-fiction piece of work that well could go down as a landmark historical document of the final days of the 45th president’s term in office. It’s titled “Peril,” co-written by a walking-talking journalistic legend, Bob Woodward, and an up-and-comer, Robert Costa.

They are telling the world a story about the imminent peril that the 45th POTUS put the nation through while he continued to fight the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Joe Biden won fairly, squarely, legally and any other way you want to describe it.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley called his Chinese counterpart to assure him he would be alerted ahead of a possible attack by the United States, Woodward and Costa tell us. They also related how then-Vice President Mike Pence talked with one of his VP predecessors, fellow Indianan Dan Quayle, about how he (Pence) could overturn the results of the election; Quayle told Pence to “give it up,” that he had no choice but to obey the Constitution and certify the results on Jan. 6.

I want to know more. I trust Woodward implicitly to get it right. I mean, he and his former Washington Post college Carl Bernstein wrote the book on political investigative journalism (no pun intended) during the Watergate crisis of the 1970s.

This is good stuff. I might be too old to read a good book in one sitting. I am damn sure not too old to learn more about how vulnerable our democratic institutions can become when we put a charlatan in charge of our nation’s executive government branch.

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local news

Gerrymandering to commence

A now-deceased Republican state senator from Amarillo, Teel Bivins, once told me why he allegedly hated the once-every-decade chore that fell to the Legislature: redistricting.

He said it provided “Republicans the chance to eat their young.”

I am not not at all sure what Bivins by that quip. I wish now I had asked him in the moment to explain himself. But … whatever.

The next redistricting effort is about to commence in Austin. Texas is going to get two more U.S. House seats, thanks to rapid population growth, particularly among those of Hispanic descent.

What happens over the course of the next 30 days or so is anyone’s guess. Texas Republicans run the Legislature. They’re going to draw those districts in a way that enables them to keep a firm grip on power. Hey, it’s part of the process. Democrats did the same thing when they ran the Legislature.

The GOP lawmakers are going to gerrymander the living daylights out of these districts. They’ll bob and weave along streets in order to keep as many GOP-leaning voters as possible within certain legislative or congressional jurisdictions.

Bivins once talked about the need to seek “community of interest” districts. He once told me of his disliking the gerrymander process. He didn’t do anything to stop it, as near as I can recall.

You may count me as one American patriot who thinks that gerrymandering stinks to high heaven. I also believe the Legislature ought to give this task up to an independent, non-political body. That’s just me talking.

As lawmakers said in a lengthy article in the Sunday Dallas Morning News, this process is as “bare-knuckled as it gets” in Austin.

The Dallas Morning News (dallasnews.com)

Bring plenty of bandages, legislators.

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national security, political news

Yearning for GOP return

Am I allowed to declare that I am yearning for a significant political revolution?

I am going to do so anyway. I want the Republican Party to return to what it used to be: a party based on principle and ideology, not one that is fused to the personality of a cult leader who threatens real Republicans with retribution if they don’t profess blind loyalty to him.

Let’s stipulate something up front. I have no intention of endorsing whatever ideology a newly reborn Republican Party endorses. I remain a proud member of what I prefer to call the “good government progressive movement.” My politics tilt left, but I am not above endorsing compromise when and where it serves the greatest good.

The GOP today doesn’t adhere to the good government notion of anything. It is wedded to this nut job who occupied the presidency for a single term before he got drummed out of office by President Biden.

Why lament the absence of a real, honest-to-goodness Republican Party? Because I long have favored a strong two-party system that keeps both major parties alert. We don’t have that kind of political process at work at this moment. We have one party of ideas — the Democrats — doing battle with a cult following that operates under the Republican Party banner.

For starters, I now shall declare (for the umpteenth time) my intense desire for the leader of that cult — the aforementioned single-term, twice-impeached POTUS — to be kicked off the political stage.

Then we might see a return to some sort of political debate over ideas. Let the two parties argue without fear of being defamed, denigrated and defiled by a former POTUS who — if he had any sense of decency — would acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election … and then disappear.

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national news

Is this a ‘super spreader’?

My thoughts as I watch a pretty good college football game this afternoon are turning away from the game itself.

It’s a contest between the universities of Florida and Alabama. They’re playing the game in Gainesville, Fla..

The stadium is packed with fans. The CBS TV network cameras routinely scan the crowd to show us images of cheering fans. Why, they’re just happy as the dickens watching the game.

However … and I consider this a pretty big deal: I am not seeing any masks on faces of young folks packed shoulder to shoulder. I don’t know what the stadium seats; I am guessing it’s something north of 80 grand.

Oh, wait! This is Florida, right? The state is governed by a no mask-mandate “hero,” Republican Ron DeSantis, who’s been threatening President Biden with all kinds of reaction if the feds keep insisting that states do what they must, which is to protect the people who live there.

I want to add that Florida — along with Texas, where I live — is among the states most vulnerable at the moment to the delta variant of the COVID virus that has sickened so many millions of Americans. Oh, and it’s killed more than 600,000 of us, too!

A part of me is glad to see some semblance of “normal” returning to our lives. A bigger part of me worries about events such as college football games played in stands packed with individuals, many of whom haven’t been vaccinated against the killer virus.

I do not intend to pick on Florida exclusively, although it is tempting, given the way DeSantis has conducted himself by denying local governments the option of taking extra measures to protect their constituents against the pandemic.

Sports venues across the land are filling up these days with fans. They whoop, holler and scream their delight, often right into the faces of the individual sitting next to them.

Didn’t some medical experts tell us that one can get sick by exposing oneself to the virus in that fashion?

Hmm. I think this the “new normal” for sports fans seeking to watch a football game: thinking of the consequences of those who might be doing what they must to guard against a potentially fatal affliction.

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DC riot

‘Justice for J6’ rally fizzles

I don’t know what kind of crowd they were expecting today at that “Justice for J6” rally in Washington, D.C.

My good ol’ trick knee tells me they didn’t get nearly the response that the Donald Trump cultists had envisioned.

“Less than a half-hour before the start of this ‘Justice For J6 (Jan. 6)’ rally, there are not a ton of people at the protest site. There are just as many journalists here, and probably more police,” David Jackson, a correspondent with USA Today tweeted.

Justice for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol? Justice for the individuals who sought to “Hang Mike Pence!”? Justice for the terrorists who thought they could — at the urging of the 45th POTUS — overturn the results of a free, fair and legal presidential election?

Far-right rally draws small crowd at Capitol | TheHill

Are you serious? Are any of these clowns serious?

The Hill reported: “Still seems like more press than protesters. Less than one demonstrator per member of Congress as the scheduled event begins,” Jonathan Allen, an NBC News reporter, tweeted.

The criminals who have been charged should spend a long time behind bars if the courts convict them of what I happen to believe was an act of insurrection against the U.S. government.

Right there would be “justice” delivered to the rioters of J6.

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media news

Let’s give this a try

I have just joined a Facebook public policy group that purports to lean to the conservative side of the great divide.

It came to me under the name “Michael Johns.” I joined, read the ground rules and now am awaiting final “approval” by a group “administrator.”

Johns describes himself as a national TEA Party co-founder and an analyst with the Heritage Foundation; he now works as a health care executive.

This could be fun, if they allow me to join. I did get the invitation from this group, so perhaps they want me as part of their group.

You see, I look at public policy from a different point of view. I consider myself a “good government progressive,” which is to say I believe in compromise as a way to further constructive legislation. I do tilt to the left, away from this group I have just joined.

They ask contributors to be “fact based” in their posts. That does give me a bit of pause. Why? Because one side’s “facts” might not comport with the other side’s version of the same term.

So if I post something I consider to be fact based, will the gurus on the other side see it in the same spirit as I have posted it? We’ll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, I look forward to reading more conservative commentary. It likely won’t change my mind on the big, broad policy issues on which I stake my own political comments.

However, I am game … if they are, too.

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