local news

Armored car theft story takes weird turn

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My head is spinning.

A man who at the start of the day was considered missing and presumed to be in possible danger now has been charged with the theft of $200,000 from an armored vehicle that police found abandoned in Amarillo.

The suspect now is Trent Michael Cook, 24. He’d been driving the armored vehicle. He’s been missing for a couple of days. “Good Morning America” did a story this morning, describing Cook merely as missing. Police said he might be in some danger.

Now he’s been charged with theft. Police had reported initially that Cook was unarmed; now they say he is armed and is considered to be potentially dangerous.

http://agntv.amarillo.com//jay-ricci-report/armored-car-driver-charged-theft

What in the world changed?

Police aren’t likely to explain yet why they changed Cook’s status from “missing” to “suspect.” They’ll have to get him in custody before they explain to the public how this story has taken such a dramatic turn.

It’s all quite weird. I’ll be waiting and watching to see how this story unfolds.

 

business news

Economy has kicked into high(er) gear

What’s this? The nation’s Gross Domestic Product grew by 5 percent annually?

That’s the greatest increase in the GDP in 11 years. The economy not only has pulled itself back from the abyss, it has kicked itself into high gear.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/dow-crosses-18000-for-first-time-on-gdp-surge/ar-BBh9Hg9

What were investors’ reaction? The Dow Jones Industrial Average today closed at more than 18,000 points for the first time in history. The S&P set another record. Investors are happy. My own retirement account is making me happy again.

Here, though, is where I get confused.

I keep reading doomsayers lament the “wrong direction” the country allegedly is headed. Wrong direction.

The price of gasoline is down. Supply of fossil fuel is up. The United States is now the world’s No. 1 producer of petroleum. That’s one segment of the economy that’s looking up, and is getting the credit for the revised increase in the GDP.

You want more? The budget deficit has been cut by more than half. Remember the yammering of those who wondered whether the economic stimulus would bankrupt the Treasury? It didn’t happen. I consider myself a deficit hawk, so I view the reduction in the deficit as a positive sign that government spending is not hurtling out of control, as some have suggested.

Here’s another kick in the teeth to the naysayers. The most recent jobs report posted more than 300,000 added to the labor force. Even better is that wages are up. It was that pesky wage figure that kept fanning the flames of those who just couldn’t believe the economy had actually turned the corner.

The gloom-and-doom squad is continuing to outshout the other side.

I do not intend to let them get away with it so easily.

 

 

 

national news

Obama haters go way beyond the pale

Good ever-loving grief. Can’t the Obama haters out there ever cease their incessant rants?

The latest comes from former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, who said — are you ready for this? — that the president of the United States has implied that everyone should “hate the police.” Thus, Barack Obama is responsible for the assassination of two New York City police officers by a gunman who was angry over the disposition of the Eric Garner choking death case at the hands of a Staten Island policeman.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/dec/23/rudy-giuliani/giuliani-obama-propaganda-says-everybody-should-ha/

Yep, the one-time “America’s Mayor” has blamed the president for the actions of a lunatic.

Politifact managed to fact-check the ex-mayor’s assertion and has ruled it is a “Pants on Fire” lie. An outright falsehood.

The president has said nothing of the kind, ever, in all the discussion he’s had in public about the Garner case, or about the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Mo., or about the Trayvon Martin case in Sanford, Fla. All three incidents involved black individuals being killed by police officers or, in the Martin case, a private neighborhood security officer.

As Politifact reports: “Part of Giuliani’s point is that Obama has been empathetic to the protesters, which he has been — though cautiously so. And he has always discouraged violent protests and excessive police response.”

Indeed, the president has taken great pains to insist that protests remain peaceful and civil.

To suggest he has called on Americans to “hate” the men and women who serve and protect their communities is to tell an egregious lie.

 

national news, political news, Uncategorized

Did Obama have a hand in North Korea blackout?

North Korea’s Internet service went dark for nine hours on Monday.

President Obama had threatened to retaliate against the nutty nation after he reportedly hacked into Sony Pictures’ email service to get back at the company for a film depicting the attempted killing of North Korean loony dictator Kim Jong-Un.

Did the president order the Internet attack on the communists? He’s not saying. Nor should he.

It reminds me a bit of something that occurred in the early 1990s. It involved a veteran member of Congress and an overly zealous challenger.

The congressman was the late Democratic incumbent Charlie Wilson of Lufkin. The challenger was a Republican former Army officer named Donna Peterson of Orange.

Peterson began running some highly negative campaign ads criticizing Wilson for his lifestyle, which included Wilson’s enjoying the company of lovely women. Wilson acknowledged his lifestyle. Indeed, he once said his East Texas constituents were proud of him for it, saying they didn’t want to be represented “by a constipated hound dog.”

Wilson came to the Beaumont Enterprise, where I worked at the time, and told us that he “never initiated” a negative campaign, but said if Peterson persisted, he’d be prepared to “respond accordingly.” She kept up the attack.

Shortly after that visit, an audio cassette arrived at the newspaper. It contained a recording of Peterson — who was campaigning as a high-minded, morally righteous individual — arguing with her married campaign finance manager over his refusal to divorce his wife and marry her, the candidate. The only conclusion one could draw was that the two of them were having an affair.

We asked Wilson point-blank: Did you record this telephone conversation? He denied having any “direct knowledge” of it.

Did we believe the congressman — who at the time served on the House Select Committee on Intelligence? Well, what do you think?

Still, he ended up trouncing his opponent, who hasn’t been seen or heard from since.

The Internet blackout kind of has the same feel — to me, at least — as the mystery tape that materialized in the heat of a negative campaign for Congress.

military news

War can exhibit signs of humanity

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman is reported to have said that “War is hell.”

The Union officer was right. No one who’s ever been to war disputes the utter hell and misery associated with humankind’s most hideous action.

Occasionally over the centuries, though, combatants have demonstrated that because war is waged by human beings, that their humanity can present itself on the battlefield.

One hundred years ago, British and German soldiers laid down their weapons during World War I, the so-called “Great War” and the “War To End All Wars.” They reached across the zone littered with the corpses of men who had fallen in battle.

They held hands and sang “Silent Night.”

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/christmas-1914-day-wwi-showed-humanity-27733586

“Not a shot was fired,” Lt. Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxony regiment wrote in his diary that first Christmas of World War I.

The Associated Press reported: “On the other side of the front line, Pvt. Henry Williamson of the London Rifle Brigade was amazed by the goodwill among his enemies. ‘Yes, all day Xmas Day & as I write. Marvelous, isn’t it?'”

I get that war never is noble. It’s never glorious or glamorous. Its brutality defies human imagination.

It’s also waged by men — and now, women — who are doing the duty their nation requires of them. They answer the call to fight for their nation. Their devotion to duty doesn’t make them evil.

Of course, that was then. War was different — not necessarily better — than what we’re seeing today, with men committing atrocities, broadcasting their actions around the world and then boasting about the cruelty they exhibit.

The event that occurred on that Belgium battlefield 100 years ago, though, demonstrates how humanity can present itself on a field stained with combatants’ blood.

Yes, war is hell — but even this version of hell can be made peaceful, even if only long enough to sing a Christmas hymn.

political news

Bank it: Trump isn't running for president

My former colleagues at the Amarillo Globe-News have run a column by a guy who fancies himself as a player in Republican political circles.

He is Matt Towery, a former Georgia GOP state legislator and a pal of Newt Gingrich. He’s also a friend of the Globe-News’s corporate ownership, which is the major reason he is published occasionally in the local paper.

Towery thinks Donald Trump is considering seriously whether to run for president in 2016. What’s more, Towery is infatuated with the notion of Trump actually becoming president.

Let’s clear the air.

Trump isn’t running. He’ll never run for president. He is talking like this because he likes — no, he loves — the sound of his voice. He loves getting people all worked up over the goofy things he says and he takes himself far too seriously on these matters.

However, the real reason he won’t run is because he has a lucrative TV deal that he cannot surrender. It’s that apprentice show of his on NBC-TV, the one where he tells celebrities “You’re fired.”

He’s going to give that up to earn a paltry 400 grand a year making decisions involving the future of the nation?

Towery took pains in a column published this week in the Globe-News to poke a little fun at President Obama’s experience prior to moving into the White House. He belittled his community organizing experience and noted that Obama served briefly in the Illinois Legislature and then the U.S. Senate before being elected president in 2008.

Meanwhile, Trump keeps bellowing about whether the president is constitutionally qualified to serve in the office he holds. You know, the “born in Kenya” crap. Give me a break.

Towery equates Trump’s “star quality” with Ronald Reagan. Sure. Except that Reagan actually governed a huge state for eight years. Trump’s government experience? None.

And let’s not look askance at the importance of actually working with government.

No, Donald Trump is among the least-suited men possible for this incredibly nuanced and sophisticated job. He should keep his day job “firing” washed-up celebrities.

President Trump? Perish the thought. Forever.

International news

Is this our cyber response?

Gosh. Let me think about this.

Sony Pictures gets ready to debut a movie depicting the attempted assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un; the North Koreans reportedly hack into Sony’s computer system, causing it to crash; the United States blames the North Koreans for the cyber attack; President Obama then says there will be a “proportional” response to the North Korean effort to bully Sony.

Then, today, North Korea’s Internet system goes down virtually throughout the nation.

Coincidence? Or is this the retaliation that President Obama said would come?

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/north-korea-suffers-widespread-internet-outage-n273281

Hmm. I’m guessing it’s more than mere coincidence.

These things just don’t happen with such amazing timing, do they?

Kim Jong-Un may have picked a fight with the wrong adversary.

Don’t expect the CIA, the Pentagon, the White House, the Homeland Security Department — anyone — to own up to it. As I’ve noted already, Americans do not need to know everything that happens behind closed doors.

 

national news, political news

Iowa in January awaits ex-Gov. Perry

Ah, yes. Nothing says “vacation” quite like Iowa in the middle of winter.

That’s where the former governor of Texas is headed days after leaving the office he’s held longer than anyone in the history of the state.

Rick Perry is going to Iowa not for a little sight-seeing or some R&R, but to take part in a rally among conservative politicians — of which he is one.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/12/perry-slates-iowa-trip-after-leaving-office/

He’ll be attending the Iowa Freedom Summit. Its host is fiery conservative U.S. Rep. Steve King, the guy who once said that illegal immigrants with “calves the size of cantaloupes” are smuggling drugs into the United States. That, folks, appears to be one of the leaders of the conservative Republican movement these days.

Gov. Perry is going to be there, too. I guess he’s continuing to explore whether to run for president — again — in two years. Iowa, remember, is the first-in-the-nation state that holds those nominating caucuses that begins selecting the parties’ nominees for president.

He won’t be alone at this dog-and-pony show. Several other would-be candidates for president will be there as well: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, ex-Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and ex-Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. The most interesting attendee of the bunch will be retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson — whose name I’ve seen on a couple of presidential campaign bumper stickers here in Amarillo.

I’ll hand it to Perry. He’s not going to slow down even after leaving office. I’d recommend, though, he take a vacation. Rest up. Then get ready to go one more time, governor.

 

local news

A Christmas to remember forever

When you live long enough, you develop a storehouse of memories along the way. Holidays are a special time for remembrance.

Christmas brings back so many memories for me and my family. Going back to childhood, the year I got my first bicycle stands out. My sister and I were opening presents Christmas morning. We finished opening the gifts under the tree. Dad asked us to pick up the paper and take it to the garage. We fiddled around. Dad then told us to do it. We dilly-dallied some more. Then Dad barked at us: Take it out to the garage!

That’s when we discovered our bikes. Oh, the joy!

Fast forward to the winter of 1996. My wife and I had moved to Amarillo less than two years earlier.

It was on Dec. 22 of that year, 18 years ago today, that we closed on a house we had built — or, more to the point, that the contractor built for us.

We found a lot in southwest Amarillo. Development on the street had just begun. Ours was the fourth house on the street. Work began in mid-October. The weather had been mild and dry for the next two months.

Presto! The house was done. We signed the papers. We’d made arrangements with a local moving company to haul our worldly belongings out of storage and into our new digs.

This all happened in the span of one full day, Dec. 23.

Two days before Christmas. Our house was done. The furnishings were in the designated rooms. But boxes were strewn everywhere.

We had a few Christmas packages. Our sons would be coming over.

A couple of days before we closed on our house, my wife and I went to the storage unit where our stuff was kept and she looked around and announced to our belongings, “OK guys, just a few more days and you’ll be coming out of here.”

We didn’t get the house decorated for Christmas that year, quite obviously. But we did have a tree. It was a 3-foot-tall Norfolk pine that we had brought with us from Beaumont in early 1995. My wife rummaged through some boxes and found a string of lights.

We wrapped them around the tree, placed the packages under it, welcomed our sons over to our still-box-strewn house — and had the most wonderful Christmas imaginable as we rediscovered belongings that had been in storage. Some of it, frankly, I had forgotten we even owned.

Yes, Christmas is a time for memories. I wouldn’t recommend moving into a new home so close to the holiday. Then again, I wouldn’t trade the memory of that experience for anything in the world.

 

International news

Why oppose relationship with Cuba?

The continuing argument over whether the United States should normalize relations with a Third World communist country 90 miles off the Florida coast continues to baffle me.

The Cuban-American community is split on this issue. Republican politicians — and even a couple of Democrats — by and large oppose it; Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is a notable Republican exception to that opposition.

The opponents of President Obama’s decision to begin that process keep citing Cuban’s horrible human rights record. Yes, it’s horrible, but let’s compare it with another nation with which the United States does have diplomatic ties.

It’s Vietnam.

Consider a few facts about this country.

* We fought Vietnam in a bloody and brutal war for roughly a decade. The Vietnamese killed 58,000 Americans during that struggle. How many Americans have died fighting Cuban military personnel since Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959? Nineteen, while fighting Cuban troops during our 1983 invasion of the island nation of Grenada.

* How did the communists from the north respond when they took control of Vietnam? They imprisoned those who had worked with the South Vietnamese government, sending them to what they called “re-education camps,” which was a euphemism for concentration camps. I met a few of those “re-educated” Vietnamese when I returned to the country in 1989. Believe me when I say that they were treated as common criminals by the conquering communists.

* Have the Vietnamese enjoyed the same kind of human liberty and freedom that some in Congress are demanding of Cuba? Hardly. Vietnam remains a hardline communist autocracy. There’s been plenty of economic reform since Saigon fell in April 1975 and the country is enjoying some economic prosperity. Its people do not live totally free, however.

And yet we’ve been diplomatic partners with Vietnam since July 11, 1995, when President Clinton opened that door.

Why are some of us now so reluctant to follow the same course with Cuba?

Let’s get real. If we can bury the hatchet with a former battlefield enemy, then surely there lies opportunity to forge a relationship with a nation that poses zero military or economic threat.

 

 

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