HRC sick of the media? Duh!

Sometime around late 1999, I offered a prediction.

Hillary Rodham Clinton would not run for the U.S. Senate in New York, I said then. Why? Well, my notion was that she had grown weary of the constant battering she and her husband, President Bill Clinton, had taken from the right-wing media, not to mention the members of the Senate who voted to convict her husband of “high crimes and misdemeanors” relating to the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

She ran anyway — and won handily — in 2000.

The columnist Roger Simon, one of D.C.’s smarter political analysts, writes that Clinton is sick of the media.

Will that prevent her from running for president of the United States in 2016? Part of me says “yes,” but I now know better than to suggest that HRC doesn’t have the stomach for another campaign.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/hillary-clinton-media-simon-says-104497.html?hp=l18

I cannot quite figure Clinton out. Her husband cheated on her with a White House intern less than half his age. She forgave him — apparently. The House of Representatives impeached the president for lying to a federal grand jury about the affair. The Senate then put the president on trial, but acquitted him on all three counts relating to obstruction of justice and abuse of presidential power.

The then-first lady decided she wanted to serve with those individuals in the Senate after she and her husband vacated the White House. By all accounts, she became a stellar senator from New York and earned the respect of her colleagues. Interestingly, one of her best friends in the Senate happens to be John McCain, R-Ariz., who was among those senators who voted to convict the president. Go figure.

The media beat her up as she ran for president in 2008. Her campaign ended just before the convention that year and then — wouldn’t you know it? — she ended up serving as secretary of state in the Obama administration.

The media kept dogging her. She had at least one major misfire, her handling of the Benghazi consulate tragedy. Again, the media poured it on.

Now, at least one leading Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — a possible presidential candidate himself in ’16 — is dredging up the Lewinsky matter as a way to besmirch Hillary’s reputation. Give me a break.

Still, the media keep digging into all this stuff.

Why should Hillary Clinton want any part of this?

Beats me. I remain baffled that she ran for the Senate in the first place.

Paper or plastic … bags, that is?

Texas might find itself in the middle of yet another legal snit.

This time it could be over whether cities have the authority to ban plastic grocery bags. My hope, given my environmentally friendly attitude about such things, is that cities can do this on their own if they see fit.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/03/11/push-tra-bag-ban-goes-attorney-general/

State Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Canton, has asked the Texas attorney general’s office to rule on it. He believes cities’ efforts to ban plastic grocery bags don’t comply with state health and safety laws.

I’ll ask the question here that I’ve asked regarding cities’ authority to install red-light cameras at intersections: Doesn’t local control mean that cities and other local jurisdictions have the right to do what’s best for their communities?

Today in the Texas Panhandle offers a prime example of why such a ban makes sense. The wind is howling at this moment, gusting at 60 mph and greater. I shudder to think what I’m going to see in the morning. I’m betting I’m going to see plastic grocery bags strewn across large stretches of open country, piled up against fences, snagged in trees, wrapped around utility poles or piled up in my front yard.

Would paper bags be immune from that kind of wind-driven mess? Of course not. The paper, though, is quite biodegradable and a better fit for the landfills.

Cities all across the country are enacting bans on plastic bags. That’s their call and individual states empower the cities to act independently. In Texas, though, the Legislature retains control over municipal affairs, despite contentions from politicians — starting with Gov. Rick Perry — who espouse the value of “local control.”

Grocer associations hate the idea of the ban. Their lobby is strong in Austin. In my view, it is too strong.

I’d prefer to see a more environmentally friendly policy enacted in cities, such as Amarillo, that does away with the plastic bags. If only the state would allow it.

Hats off to Hildebran

I’ll be brief with this post.

My hat goes off to Harvey Hildebran for saving Texans money by conceding the Republican race for Texas comptroller of public accounts to Glenn Hegar, the Katy state representative who finished first in the GOP primary, far ahead of Hildebran.

Yes, there will be other runoffs, but just not one for comptroller.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/03/07/hilderbran-drops-out-comptroller-runoff/

First of all, I kind of liked Hildebran’s TV ads. They were constructive and they dealt with how he would run the comptroller’s office. They didn’t attack the other guys.

Then he decided he didn’t have enough votes among the also-rans in the GOP field to challenge Hegar, who came within less than 200 votes statewide of capturing the party nomination outright.

Hildebran could have fought on. He didn’t. He is backing Hegar.

In the process, he’s saving Texans some money by not requiring the state to have a runoff election in this contest.

Thanks, Mr. Hildebran.

Worst Congress ever?

Great day in the morning! I think we have an area where congressional Democrats and Republicans actually agree.

They all seem to agree that this is the worst-performing Congress in history.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/200295-worst-congress-ever

Of course, that’s where the consensus ends. They’re blaming each other for the dysfunction that that ails the legislative branch of the federal government.

I’ve long been a good-government kind of guy. I like government to work for the country and believe government has a role to play in helping those who need a hand. Thus, I tend to lean to the left. No surprise, probably.

The Republicans who have run the House of Representatives since 2011 have a different view. Many of them believe Congress shouldn’t do nearly as much as it’s allowed to do. So, when the president has proposed legislation and ideas to help folks, Congress has been prone to resist disposing of those ideas.

“I tell people, we’re not getting anything done and that’s good,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who intends to leave the Senate at the end of 2014.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., who has served in Congress since The Flood, recently announced his intention to retire at the end of the year. He said the place no longer is fun, no longer productive and no longer worth his time and effort.

Dingell is not alone.

Does the president deserve some of the blame for this dysfunction? Sure. Governing is a shared responsibility, which is why I get so annoyed at those who blame the president for all that ails the nation’s political system. Barack Obama promised to break the gridlock loose. He hasn’t delivered on that promise. One of the common criticisms of the president is that he isn’t fond of schmoozing with legislators the way, oh, Lyndon Johnson would do. Thus, when he proposes an idea, Obama prefers to let the merits of the idea win the day, without actually working with legislators to persuade them to push the idea into law.

It seems, though, that whenever he reaches out, his “friends” on the other side slap his hand away.

Therein lies the crux of the problem.

Republicans blame Democrats for Congress’s failure to deliver … and vice versa.

At least they agree that the legislative branch is a loser.

Stop the presses! It’s Sam’s!

This is a bit of a head-scratcher.

Amarillo City Hall has disclosed that a new retailer is coming to Amarillo. It’s a Sam’s Club “big box retail user” that’s going to be built near Soncy Road and Interstate 40.
Why am I scratching my head over this one? Well, the Amarillo Globe-News filed a public information request to the city seeking confirmation of what apparently had been a secret.

I’m still not sure why this event was shrouded in mystery.

The City Council annexed some land where the store will be built on Feb. 11. The city said only that a “big box retailer” was coming in.

Rumors began to fly. I had heard Costco was introducing itself to Amarillo, and that it would be the store coming to the location. Sam’s also was kicked around the rumor mill. A friend of mine in the commercial real estate business would tell me about two weeks ago he had heard it would be Sam’s. I’m guessing he had connections at City Hall, as he was able to say it with quite a bit of confidence.

However, the city kept this guessing game going for reasons that escape me.

Walmart, the parent company of Sam’s, didn’t return calls to local media. Nor did a consultant who is working on design specifications for the project.

It just seems a bit weird that information such as this would be kept so hush-hush. Was there some confidentiality stipulation that prevented the city from identifying the retailer? If so, why couldn’t the say just say so?

What am I missing here?

Cheney makes my head spin

My head is spinning.

I just caught up with former Vice President Dick Cheney’s interview on “Face the Nation” in which he ridicules the Obama administration’s efforts to manage the crisis in Ukraine.

President Obama is weak, indecisive, he’s lost the confidence of our allies, he’s wrong to take military options off the table — those are just some of the things Vice President Cheney offered in his assessment of Obama’s handling of the crisis.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/03/09/cheney_no_question_putin_thinks_obama_is_weak.html

I want to declare that Dick Cheney has no credibility — none whatsoever — on matters relating to managing international crises. How he can assert the things he does blows my ever-lovin’ mind.

Let us remember that Dick Cheney was in the Situation Room when President George W. Bush decided to go to war with Iraq in 2003. Cheney had declared time and again publicly that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed chemical weapons and that he would use them on our allies in the Middle East. Cheney made the case for war, argued that the United States had to invade a nation, topple a sovereign government, rebuild a nation, and create a more democratic society where none ever had existed. We would be seen as “liberators, not occupiers,” he said.

Well, Mr. Vice President, it didn’t quite work out that way.

The weapons were nowhere to be found. We toppled the government and installed one more to our liking. The war went on even after Saddam Hussein had been hanged. We lost more than 4,000 American lives.

Let us also remember that Saddam Hussein played no role at all in the 9/11 attacks. Our “allies” in Saudi Arabia are far more complicit in that heinous and dastardly act than the Iraqis. Why didn’t we topple that government, too, Mr. Vice President?

It’s almost laughable how Cheney glossed over the U.S. response to the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, saying that it occurred near the end of the Bush administration and as the Obama administration was preparing to take over. What’s the implication, Mr. Vice President? Might you be suggesting that Russia’s brass felt more comfortable invading Georgia as President Bush was about to leave office?

The Bush administration was as powerless to stop the Georgia incursion single-handedly as the Obama administration is now with the crisis in Ukraine.

My next task is to get my head to stop spinning.

Listen to one of your own, GOP

No one ever has accused Robert Gates of being a Barack Obama apologist.

He’s a Republican. Gates served as defense secretary in the George W. Bush administration; he stayed in that post during part of the first term of the Obama administration. He left office, and then wrote a memoir that was quite critical of many aspects of President Obama’s handling of foreign policy and defense matters.

So, when Robert Gates scolds his fellow Republicans for their incessant criticism of the president’s handling of the crisis in Ukraine, well, the man’s got some credibility.

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/03/09/former-defense-secretary-robert-gates-admonishe/198417

Gates told Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace on Sunday that the critics ought to back off. He noted that in 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, no one accused President Bush of being unwilling to use military force if the need arose.

The current president deserves a bit of breathing room to “manage this crisis,” Gates told Wallace. Indeed, the constant carping from those on the right seem to be giving aid and comfort to an adversary — Russian President Vladimir Putin — who’s unafraid to exploit any perceived weakness from someone on the other side.

Of course, Wallace had to bring up Obama’s golf outing during this crisis. Gates answered that all presidents need time to chill out, given that they often “work 20 hours a day.”

I only would add that presidents of the United States never are off the clock.

Cruz needs a visit to the ‘woodshed’

OK, I have to make one more point about Sen. Ted Cruz’s latest rant involving his Republican Party elders.

He’s disrespecting two of them in a big way.

Cruz took it upon himself to suggest that Sen. John McCain and former Sen. Bob Dole didn’t stand for “principles” when they ran unsuccessfully as the GOP nominees for president in 2008 and 1996, respectively.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-08/cruz-draws-bob-dole-rebuke-over-stand-for-principle-comments.html

What’s so very troubling about this whipper-snapper’s comments is that he has called out two of more distinguished war heroes ever to serve in the U.S. Senate.

Cruz, let me add, never served his country’s military.

Dole shot back immediately at Cruz. “Senator Cruz needs to check the record before passing judgment,” the 90-year-old Dole said in a statement. “I was one of President Reagan’s strongest supporters, and my record is that of a traditional Republican conservative.” Ah yes, “traditional conservative.” That’s how Dole describes himself. He’s the kind of conservative who’s fallen out of favor with the current corps of firebrands who are mounting a takeover of a once-great political party. Cruz is the non-traditional conservative, to be sure. Indeed, he’s becoming the non-traditional senator, a Lone Ranger.

For the record, Dole suffered grievous wounds fighting the Nazis near the end of World War II. He lost the use of his right arm and was nearly killed on an Italian battlefield in April 1945.

And Sen. McCain? He was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and spent more than five years being tortured as a prisoner of war by his communist captors. He, too, suffered terrible wounds when his plane was shot down over Hanoi and he parachuted into a lake in the middle of the city.

These men need no lecture about honor or principle — particularly from a loudmouth such as Ted Cruz.

That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Whatever became of graffiti war?

Paul Harpole became Amarillo’s mayor in 2011 pledging, among other things, to rid the city of graffiti.

He made something of a splash early in his first term as mayor, taking inventories of buildings that had been “tagged” by individuals and/or groups. There was some public discussion about a local lawyer’s property being used — with his permission — as a place where young people could spray-paint their symbols.

Then? I believe the public discussion has fallen mostly silent.

I’ve heard nary a sound from the mayor, from City Hall administrators, from other members of the City Council, from the cops, prosecutors, property owners, nothing.

Is the graffiti problem as bad as it was when Harpole became mayor? Is it worse? Has it gotten so much better that Harpole has declared victory?

Beats me.

The mayor took me on a tour of problem areas around the city. One area is right next to the Plemon-Eakle Historic Neighborhood, which isn’t too far from the tony Wolflin area where many of the city’s old-money elite residents live. He talked about how the city deals with this form of vandalism, how it must get the property owner to clean the mess. He mentioned how complex this process can get at times.

I’ll acknowledge that I don’t frequent very often some of the tougher neighborhoods in town where this kind of activity goes on. Thus, I’m no expert on graffiti. I did attend a day-long seminar recently at Amarillo College’s West Campus that dealt with gang issues in Amarillo. The police officer who led the discussion, Cpl. Steve Powers, displayed plenty of graffiti to those in the audience showing the various identifying marks of gangs that operate around town.

I’m curious as to whether I’ve missed something about the mayor’s war on graffiti.

Did he win? Has he given up?

Here comes Bush 3.0

George Prescott Bush likely is going to become the next Texas land commissioner.

He’s setting the stage for yet another Bush to stand tall over the Texas political landscape, now that he’s won the Republican Party primary for the statewide office.

Oh, boy.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/politics/story.aspx?id=1014927#.UxxUOFKYat8

Bush — who’s known as “P” — has never held elected office. He’s a fairly recent resident of Texas, where he’s been practicing law. On paper, P’s political resume looks pretty thin.

Except that he’s got some pretty good Texas political blood running through his veins. His grandpa is George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States; his uncle is George W. Bush, the 43rd president. That makes him a third-generation Bush — and a Texan to boot — who’s entering the political arena.

I should add that he’s got another key element working in his favor. His mother is Columba, born in Mexico and married to Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor. P speaks Spanish fluently and figures to employ his bilingual skills quite nicely as he tours the state in the next several months in search of votes.

I am not going to poke fun at P for seeking to follow the trail blazed by grandpa, Uncle W and Dad. The landscape is full of political dynasties. Does the name “Kennedy” mean anything? How about Cuomo? The Rockefellers have done pretty well, too. “Udall” remains a pretty strong brand in the Southwest and Mountain West.

All of this dynasty talk does bring to mind, though, the shutting out of other candidates who otherwise might have at least as much to offer the votes as someone named Bush, or Kennedy, or Cuomo.

These are like the sons and daughters of famous actors who end up with starring roles even though they might not possess the talent of their famous forebears. Or the sons of famous athletes who take roster spots on teams that should go to other, more talented players; Mickey Mantle Jr. and Pete Rose Jr. are two notable sports failures who come to mind immediately.

If P succeeds as land commissioner — and I hope he does — then he’ll have shown that he’s more than just a famous name.

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