Monthly Archives: December 2024

national news, political news

Is there another Carter?

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Jimmy Carter’s death brings to mind something I wrote on this blog prior to a recent presidential election … I think it might have been the 2020 event.

I long have lamented that today’s Democratic Party is dominated by the same tired faces, speaking the same tired policies, appealing to the same tired constituencies. I wanted a new face to emerge from the crowd of 300 million-plus Americans.

I thought there might be “another Jimmy Carter” out there.

We all remember the 1976 Democratic Party primary, yes? The field was full of familiar faces. I actually put a Frank Church lawn sign in my front yard. Church was a U.S. senator from Idaho who had been on the national scene seemingly since The Flood.

He didn’t win the Oregon primary that year. Carter did! He went on to the convention that year and stood before the crowd and opened with that familiar refrain: “My name is Jimmy Carter and I am running for president.”

Many of us didn’t know this guy. He had that deep South drawl. He hailed from Georgia. He said he’d never lie to us. He vowed to fix the then-wounded economy. His opponent, President Gerald Ford, was running for election to the office he never sought but was handed it when Richard Nixon resigned ahead of certain impeachment and conviction for the Watergate scandal and coverup.

I still think there must be a Jimmy Carter out there. Certainly someone can emerge from the crowd of Americans and surprise us in 2028. History can, and often does, repeat itself. Someone brand new can capture our imagination the way Carter did. Hey, it’s a big country out here. Many of us are waiting for a fresh face and vigorous new voice.

I will hope for the best as we endure four years of Donald J. Trump.

national news

Carter’s death shouldn’t signal ‘an end’

When the world heard of the passing of President Jimmy Carter, the tributes began flowing immediately into print and onto the airwaves and the Internet.

Someone said on TV that Carter’s death signaled “the end of an era,” implying that no one could succeed in building rapport among differing ideologies.

I am going to assert something different. I believe the former president’s passing at age 100 can reawaken the value of working together to enact laws and public policy.

Every former president has issued warm statements of gratitude for the struggle that Carter fought and saluted him for the humanitarian champion he became after leaving the White House in 1981. Republicans and Democrats alike all said essentially the same thing, that Carter personified the good in all Americans.

So … they recognize goodness in one of their own when they see it.

Congress today is vastly different than the body that served during the Carter years in the White House. It’s been reported that President Carter met with stern opposition to many of his more controversial proposals, such as giving the Panama Canal to the Panamanians. They reportedly also were chapped at Carter’s seeming moral superiority, given his deep born-again Christian faith.

Still, somehow the president and Congress managed to govern. We aren’t seeing much actual governance these days. Indeed, fissures are appearing within the Republican congressional caucus as the GOP struggles to determine whether to keep Mike Johnson as speaker of the House.

Good government always is possible when opposing sides realize it’s a team effort. I believe Jimmy Carter understood that tenet and, thus, was able — for example — to appoint more women to the federal bench than all the preceding presidents were able to do combined.

Does the 39th president’s death signal an end to good government? Not in the least!

local news, medical news

New year, challenge await

Long ago, I vowed to cease making New Year’s resolutions for reasons you’ll understand … I don’t follow through on them.

So, what the hell is the point?

However, 2025 is going to mark the start of a new journey I intend fully to complete. I wrote on this blog a while ago that I have sought professional help to lose the weight I gained since February 2023. I buried myself in comfort food after losing my dear bride, Kathy Anne, to glioblastoma brain cancer.

I packed on way too many pounds.

I reached out to the Veterans Administration Medical Center where I get my medical care. They have a nutrition program at the Sam Rayburn Clinic in Bonham. On Friday I will engage with a nutritionist to begin a 16-week class on building a better, healthier lifestyle.

The VA calls the program MOVE. I don’t know what MOVE means, although the all-capital-letter identifier suggests it’s an acronym; I’ll ask when I sign in Friday morning.

I used to have sufficient self-discipline to accomplish weight-loss goals by myself. That discipline has vanished. I decided to admit to a lack of self-starting ability. The VA has been most helpful in preparing me for the start of this class.

My weight-loss goal is substantial. I hope to achieve it by the end of 2025. I figure that if I succeed in meeting the MOVE goals during my class period, I’ll reach my target weight according to plan.

I won’t chronicle my progress regularly on this blog. I am taking a moment today to tell my friends and family members — and others who read my messages — that this old man is about to try a new approach to achieving what we all want … to live a long and fruitful life.

I am not yet ready to check out of this Earthly world. Therefore … I’ll see y’all at the end of the road.

national news

Carter’s speech, a tradition lost

Jimmy Carter opened his Jan. 20, 1977 presidential inaugural speech with these words:

For myself and for our Nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land.

Roll that sentence around for just a moment and think of the context in which the new president delivered it. He had just defeated President Gerald Ford, who was running for election, in a bitter, closely fought contest. Carter won 297 electoral votes to President Ford’s 241. It was a mean campaign, man.

But that gesture spoke about the decency of the two men who had just fought tooth-and-nail for the presidency.

President Carter died today at age 100. There will be more on this blog about the legacy that Carter leaves behind. One key element of this great man’s life is the gentleness of his spirit. He and Ford easily could have gone their separate ways after that bitter fight … but they didn’t.

They became the best of friends. They became allies working in tandem to promote ideas they shared. When Carter left the presidency four years later, in 1981, the two men worked together to help form the Carter Center in Atlanta. They became champions of the causes the Carter Center sought to elevate: the advancement of human rights and free elections.

Imagine that happening in today’s even more bitter political climate. I can’t imagine it. Today we are filled with outright hatred that cannot be bridged by a simple, declarative sentence such as the one Jimmy Carter delivered as he was about to assume the most powerful office in the world.

That is the mark of a champion.

national news

Jimmy Carter: great American

A truly great man has departed this Earth, which is a better place today because this man chose to serve the world from an office in Washington, D.C.

President Jimmy Carter died today at age 100. We’re going to hear a lot in the next few days and weeks about his being the “greatest former president in U.S. history.” He was all of that, but I am not going to use that as a measuring stick to denigrate the four years this man served in the crucible of power as president.

Jimmy Carter did not preside over a failed presidency. There. I have gotten that out of the way. This good man, who came out of virtual nowhere to win the office in 1976, embarked on a series of initiatives that changed the world forever.

  • President Carter negotiated the handing over of the Panama Canal to Panama, which had sought control of the key passage. It was a difficult and complicated negotiation, fraught with controversy at the time. Ultimately, though, it has proved to be the wise decision.
  • The 39th president initiated diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China. It meant severing our relations with Taiwan, but it was in keeping with this country’s “one-China” policy. Certainly, our relationship with China has had its ups and downs. However, it was the right call.
  • President Carter helped negotiate a lasting peace treaty between two sworn enemies, Israel and Egypt. He brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David where they hammered out an ironclad peace agreement that stands to this very moment. Please note that Egypt has been silent since Israel went to war against Hamas after the terrorists’ rocket attack against Israel.

Yes, there were some serious setbacks that plagued the Carter presidency, chief among them being the 444-day Iranian hostage crisis. I want to call attention to this fact: Jimmy Carter negotiated for the hostages’ release until the very day Ronald Reagan took office in Washington in January 1981.

Rampant inflation inflicted deep wounds on Carter’s term. Reagan promised a brighter future. Voters elected him in a 1980 landslide.

Carter’s post-presidency saw him earn a Nobel Peace Prize for his work promoting human rights and free elections. He built houses for the poor. He established the Carter Center in Atlanta and used it as a platform to promote his ideals of justice for all.

Carter was a deeply devoted Christian who didn’t use his faith as a prop. He believed in Jesus’s teachings and lived in full devotion to what Jesus taught his believers.

President Jimmy Carter’s legacy is firm. May this good man rest in the eternal peace he has earned.

national news

MAGA Nation at war with itself?

Heads up, MAGA Nation … there appears to be a multi-front battle forming among members of the cult that scored a victory in November but who amazingly don’t yet know how to spend the spoils of victory.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, one of MAGA’s chief proponents, could be in danger of losing his powerful post as second-in-line to the presidency. His sin? Johnson has deigned to work with Democrats on keeping the government from shutting down. The MAGA credo includes a prohibition against working with them dreaded Democrats.

Not only that, but Johnson’s performance in mishandling the budgeting legislation has pissed off the MAGA cultist in chief, Donald Trump.

High tech billionaire Elon Musk is wearing out his welcome at the White House’s waiting room simply by being in the news more than the guy who elevated him to the un-elected post he shares with GOP loudmouth Vivek Ramaswamy; the two of them want to cut trillions of dollars from the budget.

Ramaswamy has angered MAGA followers with some language they deem inappropriate for whatever cause they are seeking to put forward.

Now we hear elements of the TEA Party are entering the fray. You remember them, right? They were the “tax enough already” cult that used to rule the roost in Congress until they got shoved aside by the MAGA loyalists. (FYI, I choose to capitalize “TEA” because I see the word as an acronym meaning “taxed enough already.”)

Oh, and what about Vice President-elect J.D. Vance? Is he missing in action? Not word lately from the veep-to-be. Go figure where he stands on anything.

So, Donald Trump’s rocky start to ascending to the pinnacle of power continues. May the battle be as “bloody” as many Americans hope it becomes. I say that because I believe our government will survive … serious injury and all.

Sports news

Talking football with stranger

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For those of us who have watched folks from all over the country enjoy college football success, I was struck this morning with an opportunity to talk a little tackle football with a guy I didn’t know from the Man in the Moon.

I was riding an elevator at a Barnes & Noble Booksellers store in Frisco, Texas, when a fellow wearing a bright green shirt with a bright yellow “O” emblazoned on its front walked into the elevator.

I looked for just a second at the guy’s shirt and blurted out “Go, Ducks.” His face lit up like my Christmas tree at home … or likely at his home, too. “Yeah, it’s going to be a great game on Wednesday,” he said. Yep. The “great game” will feature the No. 1- ranked Oregon Ducks against The Ohio State Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl.

We both chuckled at the notion that the Ducks now belong to the Big Ten football conference, which he and I admitted we had learned to hate growing up in Oregon. He hails from Klamath Falls; I was raised in Portland. “All my friends have moved from K Falls to Portland,” he said, “so I still have a lot of friends in Oregon.”

Why hate the Big Ten? Because the Ducks belonged to the Pac-12 but then gravitated this past year to the Big Ten. The Ducks won the Big Ten championship and will represent that conference as its champs against Ohio State, a perennial Big Ten powerhouse. The Ducks had beaten the Buckeyes earlier this year in Eugene, a 32-31 nailbiter. Our goal every year was to cheer on the Pac-12 in the Rose Bowl, which historically pitted the Pacific Coast conference against the Big Ten champs.

The Pac-12 is now down to the “Pac-2,” with just Oregon State and Washington State remaining in what once was a proud football conference. “It’s better than being in the Pac-2,” he said. Indeed …

We went our ways. I am sure we’ll end up metaphorically in the same place on Wednesday afternoon, in front of our respective TV sets cheering on the University of Oregon against Ohio State.

Go, Ducks!

Donald Trump, national news

Do not disbelieve Trump’s warnings

Donald Trump’s pathological lying makes it impossible for me to believe virtually nothing that flies out of his yapper.

Except for one thing.

That would be the warnings he has issued about what he intends to do when he becomes president of the United States of America.

When he has said he lost “many friends” on 9/11, we learned he attended zero funerals for his friends after that tragedy. He boasts about his “landslide” victory in 2016 when in fact he lost the popular vote and was elected solely on the basis of the Electoral College. He inflates his net worth, his intelligence and says he hires only “the best people”; all lies.

But he says he will toss the Constitution aside on his first day in office and will govern “like a dictator” for one day. That kind of boast … I believe.

He has said he intends to pardon many of the Jan. 6 traitors imprisoned after being convicted of seeking to overturn the 2020 election. He vows to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” with Ukraine. He intends to “drill baby, drill” even though we’re now producing more petroleum than ever in our history.

Trump will take office with plenty of executive authority at his disposal. He says his 2024 victory gave him a “mandate” to use that power. Well, it did nothing of the sort. His victory was narrow. He will deploy that authority immediately upon taking office, or so he has vowed.

I will take him at his word on that, but on nothing else.

national news

Trump shows true self

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When word came out that Donald Trump had issued a “holiday greeting message” to the world, I immediately became reluctant to read it, as I thought I knew what the next POTUS would say.

I read it anyway and, sure enough, my instinct was correct.

This individual is utterly and totally incapable of demonstrating an ounce of grace during this holy season. His message contained epithets toward his predecessor in the White House, toward the three men who weren’t pardoned from execution by the president and for all the critics who continue to lament this dips***’s election this past Nov. 5.

He couldn’t simply say “Merry Christmas” and call it good. No mention of Jesus’s birth, no mention of the joy Christians feel toward that event.

I don’t why I bothered to read this message. It simply affirmed what I knew already … that this clown cannot perform the simplest tasks we seek from the leader of our great nation.

business news, International news

No, you cannot just ‘take back’ canal

Donald J. Trump is all bluster and fake bravado and zero substance and knowledge of the limits of the power of the office he is about to inherit.

He said he wants to “take back” the Panama Canal from the country that owns it outright, Panama. Why? Because he doesn’t like the steep fees the Panamanians are charging U.S.-flag ships using the canal.

Good grief! Panama took over the canal decades ago in a deal worked out with the U.S. government. It belongs to them! Panama is a sovereign nation that can do whatever it chooses with its assets. The United States has zero legal authority to seize property owned and operated by another nation.

I get that Trump doesn’t like the fees being charged U.S. shipping. I don’t particularly like it either. However, disliking another nation’s policies does not give us the inherent right to do the kind of thing that Trump is suggesting.

Let’s all get ready for this kind of nonsense to repeat itself for the next four years.