economic news, local news

Mixed feelings over airport expansion

How am I feeling these days as I learn about the expansion of McKinney National Airport just down the road a piece from where I live in Princeton?

My feelings are decidedly mixed. Although I tend to support the expansion as an economic driver for a region that already is undergoing a tremendous population explosion.

I shall explain myself.

Voters rejected a $200 million bond issue a couple of years ago to expand the airport, creating a third commercial air terminal in North Texas. It wasn’t even close, with 58% of the votes saying “hell no!” to the expansion. Had I been able to vote on the project, I would have voted in favor. Voters had their say.

Aha! But it wasn’t the final word. McKinney officials weren’t to be dissuaded from fulfilling their dream. They have broken ground on a smaller expansion, costing about $70 million. They’ll add an air terminal, expand parking and dress up the grounds to begin commercial air service sometime late next year. A low-cost airline already has signed up to begin servicing the airport to be known in aviation-speak as TKI.

It is mildly troubling to me that McKinney officials chose to ignore the voters’ wishes by proceeding with the airport project. Opponents cited the massive change such a project would bring to a community that they liked as it stands. There could be noise pollution, traffic congestion and all the various elements associated with rapid growth. At the groundbreaking ceremony, officials spoke affectionately about the growth that will come this way.

Princeton, where I have lived for six years, is the fastest-growing city in the United States. It currently is terribly underserved by commercial establishments. This morning, for example, I drove to McKinney to purchase a $6 part for my bathroom sink. I couldn’t find a store to serve my needs in Princeton. I am going to presume that economic expansion will bring those services and many others eventually to my city.

Indeed, the landscape in the greater McKinney/Princeton/Farmersville area is now slated for some monumental change once the airport expansion is complete. All of that produces a mixed bag of emotions for my neighbors and me. Thus, I can declare my feelings remain mixed as the airport construction is set to begin.

I am going to pray it goes well.

media news

So … what about WH communications chief?

I am going to call attention briefly to an individual who hasn’t received a whisper of chatter in the boiling controversy over Jeffrey Epstein’s files and whether they should be released for public review.

I refer to the White House communications director. That’s right. Donald Trump hired a guy to serve as communications director for his second term as president. His name is Steven Cheung, a native of Sacramento, Calif. He played football at Cal State-Sacramento,  but didn’t earn a degree there. Hmm. More on that in a moment.

The communications director role is to control the information flow from the White House, to ensure it is consistent with whatever message the president wants to convey. The communications chief must work with the press secretary and all Cabinet staffers and White House staff to deliver a cogent, reliable message from the White House to the public.

The Jeffrey Epstein communications flow has been a cluster fu** of the first order. What in the hell has Steven Cheung been doing? The White House changes its tune about whether to release the information contained in the files pertaining to Epstein, the late child molester/sex trafficker and his relationship with Donald Trump. It vows to be “transparent,” then reneges on its pledge to reveal all the information it has on Epstein.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has told the media she informed Trump in May that his name is in the files. Trump then said he didn’t hear about it until June. Or maybe it was July. Shouldn’t the communications director be able to tell the president keep the story straight?

Cheung is not a seasoned communications professional steeped in political tradition. His earlier stint as commo director for the 2024 Trump campaign was riddled with blowups with the campaign media. He quit the White House during the first Trump term over a snit he had with White House chief of staff John Kelly.

It all seems connected to the revelation that Cheung didn’t complete his college degree at Cal State-Sacramento. He looks for all the world to me to be a throwaway appointment, a sycophant whose fealty to Trump made him preferable to others who well might have more actual experience keeping the lines of communication untangled.

So, as the White House stumbles, fumbles and bumbles its way through this Epstein matter, Americans are entitled to ask: What is the White House communications director doing during the daylight hours … because he has lost control of the narrative?

crime news

Epstein isn’t going away

I can say this with crystal clarity … Jeffrey Epstein is not going away anytime soon.

He’s dead. He won’t come back. His name, however, won’t die along with his miserable body. With that in mind, the Congress is taking a monthlong break. I am sure they’re going to get a snootful from their constituents at home. Listen up, GOP U.S. Rep. Keith Self, I am putting you on notice, too.

Trump once pledged to release all the info on Epstein, the convicted child sex trafficker. Then he backed away. Now the Wall Street Journal says Trump sent Epstein a birthday greeting card with lots of lewd pics of underage girls. Trump denies it. He has sued the Journal for a billon bucks. He’s going to lose.

I am reminded of the trouble that caught up with President Nixon as he tried to cover up his involvement in the Watergate scandal. That matter never died, either. Nixon ended up quitting the presidency when the Supreme Court ruled he had to release the tapes that contained his instructions to cover the matter up.

Something tells me the walls might be closing in on Trump.

national news

Immigration: way up in polling!

Here’s a news flash that ought to get immigrants’ heart pumping: a Gallup poll says 79% of Americans view immigration and immigrants favorably, compared to 64% a year ago.

Who knew?

I am the direct descendant of immigrants who came to this country in the early 20th century because they, along with millions of others, saw the United States as a place where dreams come true. Theirs did.

And yet, some folks in the Donald Trump administration believe immigrants are sullying the national culture. What the hell?

They aren’t just targeting undocumented immigrants. They want to slam the door in the faces of all foreign nationals who choose to become U.S. citizens. I shake my head in shame and wonderment … and ponder what my Mom’s parents would think of that.

I want to single out briefly my maternal grandmother. She was Yiayia to her 12 grandchildren. Hell, her children — Mom and her two brothers — even referred to her that way. She was as patriotic an American as you would find anywhere. She loved Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. I am prepared to argue that Yiayia was the greatest American I’ve ever known … or ever will know.

She did not sully the character of this nation. She enhanced it! She enriched it! Yiayia and others who choose to live in the world’s most indispensable nation make it even greater than it was before they arrived here.

When I see poll results that tell me that Americans now view immigrants positively, I am heartened by a belief that most of us are rejecting the palaver being offered by Trump and his MAGA cult followers. America’s greatness can be seen every day in the faces of those who chose to seek a better life in the land that offered it to them.

crime news, national news, political news

No apology for being right about this clown

A critic of this blog just cannot seem to grasp the notion that my mind was settled long before Donald and Melania Trump glided down the escalator in the summer of 2015 to begin Donald’s career in politics.

I concede the obvious. Yep. My mind was made up a long time ago. And the 45th and 47th POTUS has done nothing at all to change it. I believe then what I believe now, which is that Trump is categorically unfit for public office.

But you know that already. Correct?

What none of us knows at this moment is what can be done to improve matters in D.C.

I’ll start with a couple of possibilities. One is to turn the House of Reps into an organization led by Democrats. Voters need to wrest control of that chamber from Republicans. If that occurs in the 2026 midterm election, then the fun can begin anew. There might be a third impeachment of this fundamentally corrupt individual. This impeachment could center on his involvement with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein hanged himself in a federal prison cell. Trump is now believed to have had something more than a passing acquaintance with this sexual predator. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump sent Epstein a birthday greeting card years ago. Trump denies it. He has sued the Journal, which stands by its reporting. I’m inclined to stand with the WSJ.

We have seen some fracturing among the MAGA fanatics who have supported Trump since he rode the escalator with Melania. Many of them want Trump to release the documents that could reveal a whole lot about Trump and whether he and Epstein were besties.

The other option is to elect someone to the presidency in 2028 who is clean, scandal-free and who knows how in the hell to govern. It won’t be Trump … no matter what some of his ardent supporters would like to see happen. The Constitution has labeled Trump a lame duck until Jan. 20, 2029.

Then it will be good bye and good riddance to the singularly most stupid individual ever elected to the presidency. Then we’ll have to ensure we cannot make that mistake ever again.

national news, political news

Voters are a confusing bunch

The run-of-the-mill American voter appears to suffer from some form of political schizophrenia.

Think about this for a moment, because that might be all the time you care to ponder what I am about to put forth.

Americans twice elected a young man who blazed trails everywhere he went, as the first Black editor of the Harvard Journalism Review, the first Black president of the United States, who was faithful to his wife and who avoided any semblance of scandal during his two terms in the White House.

Then voters in 2016 and in 2024 elected arguably the dumbest man ever to hold the office, who has acknowledged cheating on all three of his wives, who paid a porn actress to keep quiet about a sexual encounter he said never happened, who has never acknowledged a single failure in his professional life, who denigrates war heroes and Gold Star families, who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War, who selects certifiable morons to serve in the Cabinet, who lies at a breathtaking pace, who provoked an armed attack on the federal government to stop the certification of a free, fair and legal presidential election in 2020, the one that the president has never admitted he lost.

This is the kind of strange behavior that defies description. It challenges anyone to explain how an electorate can transform itself from a body of Americans dedicated to real-life change for the better to one that falls victim to a cretin’s call to follow him backward into the era of Jim Crow.

My hope is a simple one. That we can reverse what we have done to our nation in 2026 and again in 2028. We are far better than what we have delivered to ourselves in the form of a national government.

crime news

Let’s see if there’s nothing to see

Donald J. Trump’s administration is doing a marvelous job of pissing off its political base, not to mention the rest of the country.

It has done pirouettes around the question of whether to release information about convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s prison time and the friends he made while steering girls into prostitution. Trump said initially that he wanted the information released. He incurred the wrath of his loyalists, who don’t want the material released.

He then changed his mind, angering the MAGA cultists who have joined their more progressive antagonists in insisting that Trump release the info.

Trump’s team, though, says there’s “nothing to see.” Really?

Hey, here’s a thought: Why don’t you release the information and let the public determine whether there’s any substance to reports that Trump and Epstein were besties … and that includes reports that the future president of the United States might have been up to his armpits in criminal behavior.

local news

Too good to be true?

You have heard it said, I reckon, that you shouldn’t trust an offer that is “too good to be true.”

I’ve been getting many of them lately in North Texas. Here’s how they go:

My phone rings with the message that says “Spam Risk.” OK, it’s a risk of a spam call, not necessarily a guarantee that it is some sort of come-on. I answer and the voice on the other end offers to sell me a home security system for my house “with no installation charge or set-up fee.”

Sigh …

I hang up. You see, I treat calls like that the way I treat motel marquee signs that tell you that the Flea Bag Motel has “free HBO.” No. It doesn’t have a freebie.

Nor do these home security pitches. You see, no one goes into business thinking of ways to throw money away. Which tells me in clear and direct language that anyone who says they’ll install a home-security system with no installation fee is going to make up the price elsewhere in the transaction. In the monthly fee, yes? Or perhaps in some sort of surcharge.

So, there will be no installation charge. Right. It’ll come to you in a different form, which gives the solicitor a justification for spinning a tale that borders on a falsehood.

Now that I have posted this item on High Plains Blogger, I am going to stop answering all calls that warn me of a “Spam risk.”

legal news

Loathing is alive and well in DC

Oh, boy … I just hate watching spectacles like the one I watched unfold today in a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

However, given the loathsome attitude that permeates the nation’s capital, it’s not surprising and it isn’t likely to be nearly the last such demonstration.

Committee Democrats stormed out of the hearing today because the Republican leadership on the panel wouldn’t allow further debate on a truly horrible appointment to the 3rd U.S. District Court of Appeals. Donald Trump has selected his former personal counsel, Emil Bove, to a lifetime post on the federal bench. Committee Democrats wanted to debate Bove’s appointment further. GOP Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa said “no.” He ordered that the appointment proceed to a committee vote.

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey pleaded with Grassley, who he praised as a man of decency and character, to grant the extra time for debate. Grassley was having none of it. Booker wanted to know what kind of control Trump had used to coerce Grassley into denying the debate.

Bove is a patently preposterous choice to become a federal judge. This is the guy who once said it was OK to tell a court to “fu** you” while disobeying a court order. He represented Trump in his case against the woman who won a court judgment that held Trump liable for sexual abuse. He also has said it might be possible for Trump to seek a third term as president, even though the Constitution limits presidents to two elected terms. Roll that around a while … eh?

Never in my entire life have I seen relationships between the legislative and executive branches of government degenerate to the level where it sits today. I have implored all the parties concerned to seek common ground. They need to return to an era where political rivals can disagree on policy but retain a certain level of personal decorum.

It’s all shattered. I fear it is gone forever.

crime news

Open Alcatraz? What the f***?

Donald Trump’s well-spring of purely stupid notions has zero bounds, it is a bottomless pit of nonsense.

For instance, he is considering reopening Alcatraz prison, the long-abandoned lockup in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Holy crap! What in the name of ridding the government of wasteful spending is going on here?

The prison has been vacant for many decades. It is falling apart. It is now part of the National Park Service’s list of tourist attractions. Trump wants to reopen it? He wants to house prisoners there?

Why? For what possible reason? What is the incentive?

Has anyone told the dipshit in chief the cost of such a project? I will cost the government billions of dollars!

OK. All of that is the bad news. The good news is that it isn’t likely to happen. Congress won’t allow it. The matter will end up in the court system after someone decides to sue Trump over this latest form of pure political idiocy.

It’s worth calling brief attention nonetheless to the kind of nonsense that flutters around that vacuous skull that sits on Donald Trump’s shoulders.

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