Monthly Archives: October 2024

local news

Stand tall, Farmersville!

I want to offer a brief blog bouquet to a community I have gotten to know and, frankly, gotten to admire.

Farmersville sits along US 380 about seven miles east of Princeton, where I have lived for the past five years. I went to Farmersville today to take part in a brief event marking Old Time Saturday, an annual event that clogs the downtown square with booths selling all manner of goods, goodies and services.

I discovered long ago that Farmersville is a community proud of its tradition and it shows itself off whenever possible. Old Time Saturday draws vendors from all over North and Northeast Texas. The historic downtown square is festooned laughter, excitement and good times and fun.

Farmersville also celebrates every June the life and heroics of its adopted favorite son, Medal of Honor recipient Audie Murphy, who 79 years ago saved a French village virtually single-handedly from the assault of Nazi troops near the end of World War II. It is not clear whether Murphy spent much time in Farmersville, but he insisted on putting the name of the community on his dog tags when he enlisted for duty in the Army. That was good enough to persuade the city elders that “he is one of us.”

The city honors his memory every year for a weekend in June commemorating what he did in Holzwhir, France.

I was able to donate a pint of blood today and was proud to do so to help the city honor its heritage.

Farmersville does a good job setting the pace for how other communities — including Princeton — can honor their history.

national news

One month out … I’m still nervous

5 Comments

They have just sounded the gun for the final lap in the 2024 race for the U.S. presidency.

I am still a nervous wreck for reasons that should defy all logic and common sense. I keep hearing statements such as “this is a margin-of-error election.” That it’s “too close to call.”

How in the world can it be that one of the leading candidates for the presidency is a convicted felon, an admitted sexual assailant who’s also been found liable in the rape of a woman; he’s admitted to cheating on all of his wives and who never spent a single moment of his miserable life before entering politics worrying about anyone other than his overfed self.

Kamala Harris should be running way with this contest. Donald Trump is causing my stomach to roil.

What’s going to happen now that we’ve entered the home stretch? I am hearing that the Kamala Harris campaign is going to trot out some big hitters to speak on her behalf. Barack and Michelle Obama will clear their throats; so will Liz Cheney and perhaps her dad, former GOP Vice President Dick Cheney.

Maybe we’ll have another October surprise in the works. Special counsel Jack Smith’s court filing alleging even more about what Trump did on Jan. 6. Call it Smith’s “Jim Comey moment,” channeling what the then-FBI director did to Hillary Clinton on the eve of her stunning loss to Trump in 2016. Comey decided in the final month of that campaign to reopen the FBI probe into the Clinton email matter, which energized the Trump MAGA base into a frothing frenzy.

I want my gut to settle down. I want Kamala Harris to thrash Trump on Nov. 5. I cannot predict what will happen. I am left with just expressing my desire.

May every bit of it come true!

Uncategorized

Go get ’em, VA

It’s been a while since I last sang the praies of the Veterans Administration, on which I depend for my primary medical care.

So, I’ll offer a word of praise.

An unusual event occurred today. I returned from a vacation in Greece. Then I developed a pain in my right foot. It continued to worsen. I called my physician at the Rayburn VA Medical Clinic in Bonham. I got a physician’s assistant on the phone and told her of my concern. She recommended I check into an ER today to have someone look it over.

I did. I went to Medical City/McKinney, not far from my house. The PA had given the number of the VA’s hotline, which I called to let them know I had checked into the ER.

With that phone call, the VA became hooked up with a private medical provider.

The ER did an ultrasound, looking for evidence of a blood clot. They found nothing. The doc came out, counseled me on what to do, prescribed some high-powered pain meds he said would attack the inflammation in my foot. “We are going to treat this as gout,” he said.

Fine. I was out of the ER and back home in three hours.

Not bad at all.

I am a major fan of this pre-paid medical care I earned from my two years in the. Army.

Donald Trump, national news, political news

Counsel heaves new grenade into Trump’s lap

You just had to know that special counsel Jack Smith would have more to say about Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 uprising.

Today, Smith delivered the goods in a stunning 165-page filing that chronicles what many with the government told Trump in advance of the assault on the government.

According to ABC News: Trump intentionally lied to the public, state election officials, and his own vice president in an effort to cling to power after losing the election, while privately describing some of the claims of election fraud as “crazy,” prosecutors alleged in the 165-page filing.

Do you get what Smith is suggesting? It is that Trump knew right after the 2020 election that he had lost to Joe Biden … but he insisted anyway on contesting the results of what has been described as the “cleanest election in U.S. history.”

Vice President Mike Pence told Trump the truth.  So did others within the Justice Department, his key campaign aides and advisers and others within the White House national security staff.

Trump blew it all off.

This filing only makes me return to a question I keep asking of my Republican friends, many of whom say they intend to vote for Trump this time around: How in the name of all that is righteous and holy can you vote for an individual who knowingly sought to commit a criminal act by overturning a legal, fair presidential election?

Uncategorized

Traffic nightmare awaits

Every single trip I make along US Highway 380 through McKinney, Princeton and Farmersville only reminds me of what lies ahead for North Texas motorists in the months ahead.

We are facing a traffic-flow nightmare as the state highway department starts breaking up asphalt along the highway.

They’re going to close down two of four existing lanes of traffic soon to begin work to expand 380 from four lanes to six.

Then in 2027, the Texas Department of Transportation is going to accept bids to build a series of freeway bypasses around several cities aimed at relieving traffic congestion.

Until all of this is done, ladies and gents, you and I are headed for an endless stream of frustration, teeth-gnashing, four-letter words and assorted expressions of angst as we do battle with our neighbors and friends seeking to navigate the congestion nightmare that awaits all of us.

This is the part where I will pray for favorable weather to enable the crews to finish their monumental task sooner rather than later.

Sports news

Charlie Hustle got what he deserved

1 Comment

One of Major League’s Baseball’s fiercest competitors has died and thus he never will be around if the MLB makes what I consider to be a regretful decision.

That would be to include Pete Rose in the Hall of. Fame.

Rose, the all-time leader in hits, at-bats and games played is gone. His legacy, though, will remain stained forever by a decision he made consciously and with a full understanding of the consequences of that decision.

In the late 1980s, Rose bet on baseball games. He competed in some of those games on which he wagered. The MLB rule book speaks with crystal clarity: Anyone caught betting on baseball shall be banned from the organization for the rest of his life.

OK, now he’s gone. Does that mean he becomes eligible for the Hall of Fame?  If I were King of the World, I’d say “no!”

The late Bart Giamatti, MLB’s commissioner at the time of the infraction, made the right call in banning Charlie  Hustle from the game.

Rose wasn’t the most talented player ever to suit up for big-league hardball. He arguably was the most driven. Sadly, though, that drive led him astray … and he paid the price he knew he would pay.

national news

Pardon the traitors?

Of all the things Donald J. Trump has pledged to do if hell freezes over and he wins the next presidential election, one of them stands out as genuinely spine-chilling and dangerous in the extreme.

He vows to issue blanket presidential pardons to the hundreds of traitors who stormed the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 while attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

There you have it, kids. The mob that sh** on the floor of the Capitol, threatened to murder Vice President Mike Pence, who injured dozens of Capitol cops, who inflicted serious damage to our sacred public property could get a pardon from the idiot who called on them to do what they did.

I cannot think of a single more compelling reason to vote against this Republican monster than that.

What in the world does such an act signal to any other traitor who would plot such a heinous act?

It gets more difficult for this patriot — that would be me — to watch video of what happened on that day. Trump praised the mob, has called them political prisoners. He let them storm the Capitol for more than two hours before issuing a tepid request for them to go home.

And then he called them “special people” who he “loves.”

Good grief! They were traitors to the nation. Every …. damn … one … of … them!

Please ponder the consequences of endorsing an individual who embodies such visceral loathing for the rule of law.