Monthly Archives: August 2024

military news

This ‘sucker’ fires back

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As I look back over the past four days of the Democratic National Convention and its myriad examples of Donald Trump’s unfitness for public office, I am drawn to the one area that hits me right where I live.

It is Trump’s disrespect for those of us who have donned our nation’s military uniform. I am one of those “suckers” and “losers” who answered the call to duty when it arrived at my parents’ mailbox one hot summer day in July 1968. Uncle Sam summoned me to duty … and so I went to do as I was ordered to do.

Trump didn’t do that very thing. He avoided service through those infamous bone spurs.

The DNC highlighted — or “lowlighted,” if you prefer — Trump’s utter disdain for those of us who did serve. Former GOP U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois stood before the convention and decried Trump’s disrespect for him. So did U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, a candidate for the Senate in Arizona — who brought along a number of veterans to embrace his condemnation of Trump. So did Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former Navy pilot and former astronaut.

Then we had former Defense Secretary, former CIA director, former congressman Leon Panetta echo all of that as well.

Trump never should have donned the commander in chief’s mantle in the first place and he damn sure should never assume that role ever again.

The men and women who serve in our military deserve to have complete trust in their commander in chief. Vice President Kamala Harris, nominated last night to confront Mr. Bone Spurs in this year’s campaign for the White House, pledged to maintain and support the world’s most “lethal” fighting force if she is elected president.

She also has pledged to protect all the “pre-paid” benefits our veterans have earned through their service to the nation we love beyond all measure.

I believe in Kamala Harris’s commitment to those who continue to serve with honor, distinction and valor.

local news

Complex isn’t coming down after all … yet!

I guess I got a bit ahead of myself in suggesting that demolition work had begun on that monstrosity of an apartment complex on US 380 in Princeton.

The Princeton Housing Standards Authority — aka the City Council — voted 3-2 Thursday evening to order completion of several rotting structures, even as crews began razing three buildings “to the slab.”  Even those structures, deemed irreparable, could come back to life.

I don’t know about the wisdom of that decision.

The complex has sat there unfinished for more than a year, exposed to North Texas’s occasionally harsh weather. Mold and water damage run rampant through the 300-unit apartment complex.

The developer has a deadline to get the work done. Some buyers are lined up to possibly purchase the site next to Wal-Mart on the south side of US 380.

Folks, it still looks like a mess to me.

I’ll have more to say later on the location and whether it is even wise to have such a huge apartment complex on a thoroughfare that already is choked with stand-still traffic.

Sorry I jumped the gun.

local news

Monstrosity on its way down!

All the yammering around Princeton regarding that 300-unit apartment complex that has gone to serious seed must have been heard by those who needed to hear it.

I just noticed crews at work taking down several of the buildings. And this is in advance of a public meeting set for this evening at Princeton Municipal Complex to discuss the future of the site.

It looks to me as if its future might have been decided. The demolition underway involves the razing of three structures deemed damaged beyond repair. There’s too much mold and water damage to the buildings to save them. So … they’re coming down!

The City Council is meeting as the city’s Housing Standards Authority. It will discuss the various — and numerous — code violations that render the site unworkable.

I am one of many Princeton residents who is delighted to see the work commence to rid the city of this monumental eyesore created when the contractor walked off the job after getting into a snit with the developer.

We’ll just have to stand by while the work continues and see what in the name of civic improvement occurs with the site on US 380.

Keep pounding away, fellas.

Donald Trump

How is this contest still close?

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I consider myself to be reasonably well-educated, with above-average intelligence, one who is still alert at my advanced age and who has a deep love of the country of my birth.

OK, now … someone will have to explain to me how a twice-impeached former POTUS who wants his old job back is still in the race to win the 2024 election.

Bear with me while I review where we stand.

He served a single disastrous term as president; he lost re-election in 2020; he had been impeached twice by the House for high crimes and misdemeanors. He then was convicted on 34 felony criminal counts, found liable in the sexual assault of a journalist. Federal and state grand juries in four jurisdictions have indicted him on a range of alleged criminal acts, including the Jan. 6 assault on the government that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

All the while, he has hurled insults at veterans, Gold Star families, immigrants, gay people, women of all stripes, a physically challenged reporter for the New York Times and admitted to grabbing women by their private parts because he’s a “celebrity.”

These issues don’t even touch the myriad cluster-fu** acts that he committed as POTUS.

We fired this guy four years ago. We told him he wasn’t fit the job he had. Now he wants it back.

How in the name of all that is sacred, holy and sane does this add up?

I’m sure some High Plains Blogger critics will see fit to tell me I don’t get it. They are right.

I don’t.

national news

Run from behind!

Michelle and Barack Obama laid it out in plain language last night; indeed Kamala Harris has been saying it since the moment she emerged as the Democrats’ frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election.

Do not believe for a second that Donald Trump, their Republican foe, is going away quietly as this campaign revs up.

Yes, Democrats are feeling high and mighty right now as the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket takes shape and prepares its fight plan for the White House. And, yes, Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have floundered, flailed and flubbed their way along since Joe Biden dropped out of the contest.

Let us all remember 2016. Every politician and pundit on Planet Earth “knew” that Hillary Clinton was going to win that election. Then, suddenly, she didn’t.

This sudden and invigorating reversal of fortune does feel different. It does feel unique, as if it’s something none of us has ever experienced. If it is the real thing, then Harris, Walz and their enthusiastic army of supporters need to just remember how we thought we would welcome President Hillary Clinton to power in January 2017.

Yes, last night was inspiring in the extreme. Just a word of caution: Do not count Donald Trump out until after every ballot is counted!

local news, media news

Retirement teaches new lesson

Believe it or not, I am learning something in my retirement years … I am learning how to travel as a tourist, someone with no job-related pressure to keep me moving, on my toes and alert to issues around me.

During my nearly 37 years as a print journalist, I was able to travel to roughly two dozen countries. I recently compiled a list of the places I saw when I was a working stiff and I noticed that the vast majority of them either were related to my work or through my involvement with Rotary International.

My RI exposure took me to Denmark and Sweden in 2006 to attend an RI convention. In 2009, I had the high honor of leading an RI Group Study Exchange team through Israel. They all were busy and I had to be sharp damn near every day.

I was able to travel to Vietnam, Thailand, India, Cambodia and Mexico City on National Conference of Editorial Writers missions. Taiwan’s Government Info Office invited me five times to visit that country from 1989 to 2010.

Greece’s media office invited me three times to visit that country to look at its preparation for the 2004 Summer Olympics.

The best news of all of this is that my bride, Kathy Anne, was able to accompany me on many of these excursions. That didn’t reduce the obligations I had to maintain my media savvy.

This year I will have taken two trips to Europe. I went to Germany this past spring to visit dear friends in Nuremberg. I am about to leave for Greece for my fourth trip there; the Greece journey will be vastly different from my previous three trips to that spectacular nation.

The major difference? My wife is gone. I lost her to cancer in February 2023. The other difference is that I will be free to relax during my entire time in the land of my ancestors’ birth.

I’ll be able to relax! No pressure. No deadlines to keep. No stories I am required to write.

To be sure, I will be blogging daily from Greece, just as I did from Germany. I am learning, though, that this world of travel just to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of an exotic land is a welcoming place.

education news

Take all the phones away!

All the recent news reporting about local school districts “cracking down” on cell phones in public schools has me nearly laughing out loud.

Call me a hardline, no-nonsense conservative fanatic on this issue … but I have believed since the advent of cell phones that those devices have no place in a public school classroom. Zero. None.

I long have been advocate for school districts confiscating cell phones from students when they enter the school building at the beginning of a school day. Take ’em away, lock ’em up in a secure place and tell the kids they can collect the devices when the final bell rings at the end of the day.

Several school districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area have been reported to be cracking down on the devices.

I wrote a column about this matter while working for the Amarillo Globe-News. The blowback I received from angry parents was a thing to behold. I didn’t get a lot of negative response, but much of what I received was nonsensical on its face.

One parent actually told me that her child needed to be available for instant communication and that depriving the student of a phone would put him or her in jeopardy. I reminded her of how parents used to get in touch with kids during a school day: They call the school, ask to speak to their little darlin’, the school secretary sent someone to the classroom and the student arrived at the office to take the call.

How long does that take? Five minutes?

Teachers have a difficult enough job as it is without having to cope with students sending text messages back and forth during lesson time. Students should be required to devote their undivided attention to the teacher. Yeah, I understand that such a requirement was impossible to achieve even prior to the advent of cell phones.

I am heartened to hear that districts report a decline in cyber bullying after the cell phone crackdown. How can that possibly be a bad thing?

local news

Meeting set once again

I had reported on this blog my intention to comment on a special Princeton City Council meeting called to discuss the fate of that construction eyesore next to Wal Mart on US Highway 380.

Then the council postponed the meeting. It will meet this Thursday at 5 p.m. acting as the Princeton Housing Standards Authority. Now, they tell me, there will be a hearing to decide the fate of the abandoned, partially built, rotting luxury apartment complex that appears to be going nowhere in a hurry.

The general contractor got into a beef with the developer and walked off the job in the spring of 2023. My guess is that it’s about 40% finished. Will it cross the finish line? My gut along with my ol’ trick knee tell me “no.”

I intend to be present for this rescheduled hearing on Thursday. I don’t yet know whether the council make a decision that night. I asked Mayor Brianna Chacon whether there will be a decision; I haven’t received an answer.

I want to see some leadership on this matter rise to the occasion.

Let’s get rid of that eyesore.

national news, political news

Yep. the man is unfit

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Dawn  finally is breaking over the pundit class that is covering the third presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.

Ever since he announced his bid for the presidency the first time in 2015, some of us have been saying that Trump’s zero experience with public service would render him unfit for the presidency. Now, others are seeing the proverbial light.

Consider what the numbskull said about those who receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and how it compares to the Medal of Honor. He put them on an equal footing, suggesting further that the Medal of Freedom is “more important” because Medal of Honor recipients “always are wounded” and some have died to earn the recognition.

What an absolute crock of bull dookie!

The Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor; it goes to those who contribute greatly to our cultural life, through athletics, art, music, drama. The Medal of Honor is our nation’s top military honor; it is awarded to those who perform heroically on the battlefield.

Both medals are big deals.

However, for the former POTUS to put down Medal of Honor recipients because they are “wounded or killed” betrays a profound lack of understanding or appreciation of those don the nation’s uniform in service to their country.

It also reveals what I have noted many times on this blog, which is that Trump never has committed a single moment of his existence on this Earth to public service.

I am running out of ways to say this … but this moron is unfit for public office at any level, let alone as commander in chief.

Joe Biden

Getting ready for curtain call

Many readers of this blog perhaps can recall a time or three when I have revealed that I can be a bit of a sap when my emotions get the better of me.

Therefore, when I turn on my TV Monday to watch the Democratic National Convention, I am prepared to lapse into my sappy mode that evening.

Democrats are going to stand and cheer the incumbent president of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., and likely won’t stop cheering for a good while. They are going to thank the president for the job he has done during his term in office … and thank him for stepping aside and handing the party nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Of course, I will be far from the Chicago convention site; I’ll be watching from my North Texas living room. I might even join the crowd in giving the president my own expression of thanks. It’ll make me feel better.

Joe Biden had vowed to stay in the contest after his godawful debate performance in Atlanta. Then he decided to put his country first by stepping aside and delivering to Harris his blessing as she transformed in an instant from loyal VP to the party’s standard bearer in the effort to keep Donald Trump as far away from the White House as is humanly possible.

But … first things first. President Biden is going to stand before the nation and the world Monday night in Chicago and receive the raucous curtain call he so richly deserves.

May the emotions flow.