I am at the age of my life where I spend time looking at obituaries … just to see which of my friends and acquaintances have gone on to reap their great reward.
I did so again today — and got the shock of my life!
Inside the obituary page of the Amarillo Globe-News was news that a former marketing director for the newspaper had died at age 65. Her name was Jo Tyler Bagwell.
Jo was not famous outside of Amarillo — or Claude, where she grew up and attended high school. However, this woman was a force of nature. I first made her acquaintance when she worked in the marketing department of a local bank; I met her a day or two after I moved to Amarillo in January 1995 to start my job at the Globe-News. We hit it off immediately.
I want to pay a brief tribute to this woman because she was, to borrow a phrase, the “complete package.” She was physically attractive, but she also was a kind, generous, gregarious, charming, smart individual. She was a devoted Aggie.
Above and beyond all of that, she was a proud and devoted mother to her son, Blake, who many of us watched grow into a wonderful man.
I once told Jo that she was an angel put on Earth by God to care for Blake, who was born with myriad challenges, but who overcame them to blossom into the fine man he has become. He owes everything to his mother.
Many years have passed since I last spoke with Jo Bagwell. She struggled through the last stages of her life on Earth. I am saddened beyond every emotion I can summon at the news I saw today. At my age of 75 I am going to keep looking at obituaries to keep up with the rite of passage we all must face eventually.
Damn, I do not want to be surprised soon in the manner this news hit me like a punch in the gut.
Heard from a well-connected insider in the Democratic Party—pure panic is setting in over Trump and Musk taking a sledgehammer to USAID. The deep state’s slush fund just took a fatal hit.
One source put it bluntly: this has always been the Democrats slush fund, their golden goose—the engine behind their influence-peddling and backdoor funding schemes.
The same source who correctly called Kamala’s disastrous internal polling months before it leaked says Democrats are already burying partisan cash flow under so-called ‘unimpeachable initiatives’—fronting fake, ‘reasonable’ expenses to mask their political slush funds.
Another familiar Dem tactic? Using NGOs as shadow banks. Here’s how it works: USAID earmarks funds for a seemingly legitimate initiative → A Democrat-friendly NGO wins the contract → That NGO subcontracts another “VIP” NGO run by a political insider → Money quietly flows to the real target → The original problem remains unsolved → Rinse and repeat the grift.
Elon Musk is right this isn’t an apple with a few worms it just worms and needs to be completely shutdown. Since it was created by executive order President Trump clearly has the authority to shut it down, no matter what the Democrats scream. If there is any legitimate foreign aid to distribute the US State Department can handle it.
USAID needs to go away—every program, every staffer, every fake initiative. The Dems are already instructing their allies inside the agency to stay quiet, blend in, and sabotage from within. USAID is 99% Democrat-run. Leaving it standing is leaving an enemy fortress intact.
Sorry! Wrong post for the last comment.
I’m sorry about your friend and how you heard about it.