Monthly Archives: November 2014

local news

Well, ruffle my hair and call me Frankie

The Weather Channel has listed the top 10 windiest cities in America.

Which one made No. 1?

Why, little ol’ Amarillo, Texas.

http://kissfm969.com/amarillo-makes-the-list-at-1-for-windiest-city-in-america/?trackback=fbshare_mobile_top

Who knew?

Those of us who live here could have predicted this a long time ago. I’ve never lived in a place where the absence of wind becomes a conversation ice-breaker among strangers.

It goes something like this:

Person One: “Isn’t the weather just grand?”

Person Two: “Sure is. And the wind isn’t blowing, either.”

I saw that Lubbock made the top five, which also doesn’t surprise me. But at least we’re No. 1 in something over our fellow West Texas metropolis. Lubbock might get the great top-tier rock concerts — such as Sir Paul McCartney and (coming up) Cher — while we’re relegated to the likes of Eddie Money and assorted over-the-hill reunion bands.

But by golly, we’re the windiest darn city in the U.S. of A.

We knew it all along.

http://www.weather.com/tv/tvshows/americas-morning-headquarters/10-windiest-large-cities-america-20140408?pageno=10

national news, political news

Here's how you start a firestorm

Mention the n-word in the context of someone from a political party using against the president of the United States and you’re bound to start major-league hissy fit.

I did that today by posting something that was broadcast on C-SPAN.

Here it is:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/c-span-scrambles-n-word-article-1.2001484?utm_content=bufferfe0c3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=NYDN+Facebook

An idiot from San Diego, Calif., called in on the “Republican line,” and identified himself as a Republican. He then said “Republicans hate that (n-word) Obama.” Steve Scully, the C-SPAN host, cut the caller off immediately in a remarkable display of dispassion.

My tweet asked whether the moron spoke for “other Republicans.”

Then the fire started blazing on my Facebook news feed, where my tweet was posted automatically.

I have many conservative friends, and a few of them are quite active on Facebook. They took a lot of time suggesting that I labeled “all Republicans” as racists. I didn’t do that.

I asked what I believe is a straightforward, fair and legitimate question: Did the C-SPAN caller represent “other Republicans?”

This is what happens when we talk about race in America. We’re supposed to be living in what are calling a post-racial period. I don’t believe that’s the case. The election of Barack Obama as president has shown that racial politics is alive and well.

He’s made race an issue on occasion. When the topic comes up, his foes declare he’s a racist. When the president’s foes argue their point, the president’s allies declare that they are the racists.

And when people such as yours truly ask a simple question about a moronic caller who’s use of the n-word was broadcast on a national cable TV news program, then we see that race remains at or near the top of many Americans’ conscience.

I believe I’ll refrain from commenting any further on racial politics for the time being.

I’m a bit worn out from the battering I took today.

business news, national news, political news

Jobs report due; get ready for unfounded griping

The Labor Department reported today that claims for unemployment benefits fell to a 14-year low.

This comes on the eve of its monthly jobs report, due out Friday.

So, what will happen? Usually, when the jobless claims dip as they did this week, it means a glowing jobs report is sure to follow.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-jobless-claims-fall-to-14-year-low/ar-BBdiTRM

I’m not going to predict any numbers here, because I have no clue what they’ll be. I’m thinking, though, the job growth in the private sector will match the recent trend, which has been very good.

So, how will the Obama administration’s critics react to this latest bit of sparkling economic news?

They’ll say, “Oh well, the Christmas buying season is almost here and retailers are hiring temporary help to assist with the boost in business.” They’ll pooh-pooh the numbers as a seasonal aberration. Big deal. Where’s the beef? The economy is still in dire straits. Didn’t the mid-term elections just prove that Americans are uneasy about the economy and the direction the country is heading?

This goes to show what politics does to reality.

The reality is that the economy has come back. It’s getting even stronger.

I heard an oil-and-gas analyst today suggest that lower fuel prices are going to give consumers more disposable income to spend at shopping malls across the country, suggesting a booming holiday shopping season that commences with Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving.

Oh, but that’s all smoke and mirrors, the critics will say.

Fiddlesticks.

 

 

national news, political news

Here's a way to demonstrate diversity

New members of Congress proclaim a “new day” has dawned on Capitol Hill. You hear it after every election.

I get their enthusiasm and their interest in stirring the pot.

Here, though, is the surest way to actually prove a new day has arrived at the seat of federal government power.

The Congressional Black Caucus needs to invite two new members of Congress to its membership: U.S. Rep.-elect Mia Love of Utah and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.

They are Republicans.

Traditionally, the CBC has been all-Democrat organization. It goes back to its founding in 1969. The Senate at the time had a black member, Edward Brooke, R-Mass., who didn’t join.

Since then, its membership has comprised Democrats only.

I see nothing in the title of the organization that says its members must be from one party. The very term “Congressional Black Caucus” states quite clearly that all African-Americans who take the oath to serve in Congress are eligible to join.

So, with a brand new African-American Republican from Utah coming on board in January, and with another freshly elected Republican senator from South Carolina (Scott had been appointed to the seat by Gov. Nikki Haley) among its members, the CBC can demonstrate its belief in ideological diversity.

No political organization necessarily needs to be a mere echo chamber, with members parroting each others’ point of view. All political organization need to hear varying points of view. It’s good for the soul and the mind.

The Values Voter Summit earlier this year is an example of an organization that shuts out liberals because, by golly, liberals just don’t appreciate good ol’ American values the way conservatives do. That, of course, is utter horse manure.

Let’s turn this notion on its ear. The CBC is a traditionally progressive organization. How about throwing tradition out the window and insist that two new members of Congress — both Republicans and both clearly conservative — join the CBC and infuse that caucus with some fresh perspective?

You want diversity? There you would have it.

 

national news, political news

The sun still rose in the morning

Those on the left are crying the blues.

Their “friends” on the right are jumping with joy.

Lefties are mourning the loss of the U.S. Senate, which after Tuesday night’s mid-term election flipped from Democratic to Republican control come Tuesday.

Righties are utterly gleeful that Sen. Harry Reid will turn over his majority leader gavel — figuratively — to Sen. Mitch McConnell.

My take?

Well, the sun rose the next morning like it always does. President Obama said he wants to “work with” Republicans in both congressional houses. McConnell said he intends to work with the president whenever it’s possible. Obama said he’d like to enjoy a glass of Kentucky bourbon with ol’ Mitch; no word yet on whether McConnell is going to invite the president over for a belt.

We’re going to learn in due course just how well the two sides will get along. I am not worried about things “getting worse” in Washington. From my standpoint, and looking at it through my own admittedly biased prism, it couldn’t get much worse than it’s been since Barack Obama took office in January 2009.

Don’t misunderstand. I continue to believe the country is in much better shape today than it was when he took over. The pasting Democrats took on Tuesday is because their foes on the right outshouted them over the course of the Obama administration. They have persuaded a large number of Americans that the economy remains in dire peril and that the federal government is doing a lousy job of protecting them against foreign enemies.

It’s all baloney.

The country will rock along. The two sides will continue to fight, squabble, bitch at each other — just as it’s always been done.

I’m trying to look at the big picture. We’ve done all right for the past two-plus centuries.

I’ll accept the election results for what they are. Then I’ll just need to get ready for the next election cycle, which has just begun.

 

local news

Canyon joins 21st century

Well done, Canyon, Texas voters.

You’ve awakened to the reality of life in the second decade of the 21st century, which is that we’re a mobile society and it no longer makes sense to cloister your community in the notion that staying “dry” somehow protects you from the evils of alcoholic beverages.

Canyon voters agreed to make the city “wet,” meaning that merchants will be able to sell adult beverages and eating establishments will be able to service liquor by the drink.

Will this turn Canyon into a din of debauchery where people get so drunk they stagger into the streets en masse?

Umm, no.

It means that businesses will be able to generate a little more revenue, improve their bottom lines and pump some of that money back into a community that can use a little help.

This hidebound notion of keeping a community dry used to make sense when we all got around on foot, or rode on horseback, or even at the start of the automobile age.

No more. We’ve gotten mobile. People are able to travel easily to the next city to purchase their hooch and bring it back.

I’m reminded of what a Department of Public Safety officer told me once while my wife and I were visiting Perryton, in Ochiltree County. He called the seven-mile stretch of U.S. 83 between Perryton and the Oklahoma state line one of the “most dangerous stretches of road in Texas.” Ochiltree County was dry and motorists would drive across the state line, get tanked up on liquor and then drive back home. They were impaired and the roadway was the scene of numerous wrecks each week, the DPS officer told me.

Ochiltree County has since gone wet. Traffic accidents along U.S. 83 have declined and business is booming in Perryton.

Canyon now has joined the 21st century club.

Welcome aboard.

 

national news, political news

GOP readies for internal fight

One of the many forms of conventional wisdom in the wake of the 2014 mid-term election goes something like this: Republicans, flush with victory at taking over the Senate and expanding their hold in the House, now face a fight between the tea party extremists and the mainstream wing of their party.

Let’s go with that one for a moment, maybe two.

I relish the thought, to be brutally candid.

The likely Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, may be looking over his shoulder at one of the tea party upstarts within his Republican caucus, a fellow named Ted Cruz of Texas.

Cruz wants to lead the party to the extreme right. McConnell is more of a dealmaker, someone who’s been known to actually seek advice and counsel from his old friend and former colleague, Vice President Joe Biden. Cruz, who’s still green to the ways of Washington, wants to shake the place up, seeking to govern in a scorched-Earth kind of way. He wouldn’t mind shutting down the government again if the right issue arises. McConnell won’t have any of that.

So, will the battle commence soon after the next Congress takes over in 2015.

Lessons unlearned doom those who ignore them.

Republicans have been through this kind of intraparty strife before. In 1964, conservatives took control of the GOP after fighting with the establishment. The party nominated Sen. Barry Goldwater as its presidential candidate and then Goldwater got thumped like a drum by President Lyndon Johnson.

They did it again in 1976, with conservative former California Gov. Ronald Reagan challenging President Ford for his party’s nomination. Ford beat back the challenge, but then lost his bid for election to Jimmy Carter.

To be fair, Democrats have fallen victim to the same kind of political cannibalism.

In 1968 and again in 1972, Democrats fought with each over how, or whether, to end the Vietnam War. Sens. Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy challenged LBJ for the nomination in 1968. Johnson dropped out of the race, RFK was assassinated, McCarthy soldiered on to the convention, which erupted in violence and Democrats then nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who then went on to lose to GOP nominee Richard Nixon.

Four years later, the Democratic insurgents nominated Sen. George McGovern after fighting with the party “hawks.” McGovern then lost to President Nixon in a landslide.

So, what’s the lesson?

History has shown — and it goes back a lot farther than just 1964 — that intraparty squabbles quite often don’t make for a stronger party, but a weaker one.

Bring it on, Republicans!

 

 

medical news, national news, political news

Two decades since Ronald Reagan said 'good bye'

This video is worth sharing today for a couple of reasons.

President Ronald Reagan spoke in his final major political appearance on Aug. 17, 1992 at the Republican National Convention in Houston’s Astrodome. I had the high honor to hear it while sitting in the press gallery.

Now, was I a huge fan of the former president? No. I never voted for him. But two decades-plus since this speech, I continue to marvel at how disarming he could be while calling down his political foes. He did so without the overt rancor we hear so much of today.

It’s instructive to listen to how he is able to make his points with strength and conviction, but without the open hostility his political heirs seems to delight in using — even while they invoke his name, as if it somehow legitimizes their vitriol.

The second reason I want to share this video is because precisely 20 years ago today President Reagan said farewell to a nation that elected him twice to the presidency. He did so in an open letter in which he proclaimed he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a terminal brain disorder that robs people of their cognitive skill.

He would live another decade before dying of the disease. His letter is as poignant as any I’ve ever read. Its eloquence is simple but profound.

It touched me deeply when I read it for the first time, as my own family struggled with saying goodbye to one of our loved ones, my mother, who died a decade earlier of this killer disease.

The letters is attached here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/reagan-alzheimers/

My affection for Ronald Reagan has nothing to do with his policies. It does have to do with the courage he showed in telling the world of his affliction and, yes, the good humor he exhibited as he took his final bow on the national political stage.

I wish we had more of both — courage and self-deprecating humor — in today’s political world.

 

local news, political news

Republican wave douses Potter County

Just how serious is this Republican wave that the GOP is proclaiming from the Tuesday mid-term election?

Consider what happened in one justice of the peace precinct in Potter County, Texas. It had been served since 1998 by a Democratic justice of the peace, who on Tuesday got drummed out of office by a first-time candidate who –near as I can tell — no one had heard of.

My pal and former colleague Jon Mark Beilue talks about this in a blog he wrote this morning.

http://amarillo.com/blog-post/jon-mark-beilue/2014-11-05/anyone-republican-would-win-local-election

Texas is seriously Republican. The Panhandle of our state is even more so. Democratic stronghold pockets are dwindling with each election cycle. Another of them bit the dust Tuesday.

JP Nancy Bosquez soon will be a former justice of the peace. Her successor will be a fellow named Richard Herman, a retired Army sergeant.

Potter County’s Precinct 2 long has been considered relatively “safe” for Democrats. No more. To be a Republican running for anything in Texas, let alone the Panhandle, is now to be a juggernaut. Herman won even though he’s lugging some considerable personal baggage, which includes multiple arrests on felony charges.

The Republican tide Tuesday was real. It swept out a dependable officeholder who had the misfortune of being from the “other” party.

However, here’s one head-scratching element to this story. The county commissioner from that very precinct, Democrat Mercy Murguia, was elected to a full term. She survived the GOP tsunami, while Bosquez was getting swamped.

Very strange.

 

 

national news, political news

GOP scores sweep; now let's govern … actually

The deed is done.

Republicans got their “wave” to sweep them into control of the Senate, with an eight-, maybe nine-seat pickup in the U.S. Senate. What’s more, they picked up a dozen more seats in the House to cement control of that body.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-control-at-stake-in-todays-midterm-elections/2014/11/04/e882353e-642c-11e4-bb14-4cfea1e742d5_story.html

The only undecided race will be in Louisiana, which is going to a runoff. Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu appears to be in trouble there. Big surprise, huh?

What happens now?

Despite all the good economic news, there appears to be rampant discontent out there with a Democratic administration and its friends in Congress. So the voters spoke, tossing out Democratic incumbents and turning seats over where Democrats had retired.

Republicans say they want to work with the president where possible. I’m not yet ready to swill that drink.

Senate Majority Leader-in-waiting Mitch McConnell had declared his primary goal in 2009 was to make Barack Obama a one-term president. It didn’t work out that way. So now he wants to actually govern — he says.

We’ve got this immigration thing hanging over the Congress; that oil pipeline known as “Keystone” needs to be decided; the president has an attorney general appointment to make; and, oh yeah, the Affordable Care Act still is on the table, even though it’s working and insuring Americans.

How is Congress going to get past all those differences? And how is the White House going to reconcile itself with the change in power in the upper legislative chamber?

My friends on the right are crowing this morning that Democrat Harry Reid no longer will run the Senate. They now believe Hillary Clinton’s presidential “inevitability” in 2016 has been damaged by this shifting power base. They think the president has been made irrelevant as he finishes out his tenure in the White House.

I shall now remind my right-leaning friends of something critical.

The 2016 political roadmap looks a bit different than the 2014 map. Democrats will be positioned to take over some key Republican Senate seats in a presidential election year, which historically bodes quite well for Democrats.

This was the Republicans’ year and their time. Nice going, folks.

It’s time now to actually govern and to show that we can actually keep moving this country forward — which it has been doing for the past six years.