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Spotlight gets hot as it shines on Gov. Christie

Welcome to center stage, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Now that he seems to have implied an interest in running for president of the United States in 2016, the media are looking at him with intense attention to everything he says or does, or doesn’t say or do.

That’s how it goes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/christie-bridge-controversy-exposes-a-gop-rising-star-to-new-scrutiny/2014/01/11/f49dee40-7aed-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html

This is nothing new in politics. The media are trained to do this kind of thing, irrespective of party. My friends on the right can spare me the “liberal media are out to get Christie” nonsense.

I will remind them of what happened to Sen. Barack Obama when he ran for president in 2008. You’ll recall the Rev. Jeremy Wright mess and his association with a Church of Christ pastor who said God should “damn America.” Also recall all those questions about the senator’s birth and whether he was constitutionally qualified to hold the office of president. Let us nor forget, either, the associations that young Barack had with the likes of William Ayers and other members of the infamous Weather Underground anti-Vietnam War crowd.

The media were quick to pounce all over him.

John McCain got the treatment during the 2008 campaign, as did Mitt Romney in 2012. Bill Clinton’s love life became media fodder during the 1992 campaign. Michael Dukakis and convicted murderer Willie Horton were joined at the hip — so to speak — during the 1988 campaign because of a furlough that Dukakis granted Horton while serving as governor of Massachusetts; the furlough ended tragically, if you’ll recall.

The media’s mission is to report these things, to expose candidates to the people who will decide whether they are the right fit for high office.

The bridge fiasco in New Jersey is a legitimate news story insofar as it will determine whether Chris Christie is a bully. It also might determine if he is truthful when he said he didn’t know in advance that key staffers ordered the lane closures of the world’s busiest bridge to get back at a political opponent.

The media will tell the story. It will be up to individual Americans to determine for themselves if it’s a story worth telling.

That’s the way it is, the way it’s been and the way it always will be.

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Capitol Hill hypocrisy keeps mounting up

Hypocrisy is a bipartisan affliction.

Democrats are hypocrites, as are Republicans. They say one thing and do another.

Meet U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., who now joins the Hypocrites Hall of Shame for taking full advantage of a congressional perk he once sought to abolish.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/12/john-mccain-robert-gates_n_4585156.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037

The perk is “franking,” the practice of using free mail service. Kingston once sought to get rid of it. Now we learn he’s one of Congress’s chief users of the franking privilege.

Kingston has spent more than $124,000 in taxpayer money on mailings since 2009. But when he first ran for the office in 1992, he campaigned on a promise to work to get rid of the privilege. So which is it, congressman? Do you now approve of the privilege or are you using it to champion its demise?

I love these hypocrites, the people who live by a “do-as-I-say” credo. They talk the talk but when it comes to living up to their high-minded words, well, all bets are off.

My favorite hypocrites in recent times are, oh:

* Republican U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich railing against President Clinton’s moral failings while cheating on his own wife by having an affair with a congressional staffer.

* Democratic U.S. Sen. John Edwards proclaiming his abiding love for his wife, Elizabeth, as she battled cancer while he was fathering a child with a campaign staffer.

* Democratic former Vice President Al Gore becoming a champion of energy conservation while running up staggering heating and cooling bills at his palatial homes.

* Republican U.S. Sen. John Ensign touting his family values while consorting with women other than his wife.

Yes, I’m leaving many others out.

Hypocrites have long been a part of what ails Washington and, for that matter, government at all levels since the founding of the Republic. I don’t know how you get rid of hypocrites, other than to vote them out of office.

Rep. Kingston likely is going to come up with some kind of bogus rationale for using the franking privilege that his Georgia constituents will accept. That’s their problem.

I just think this kind of double-speak needs some exposure.

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Sad news about end of railroad museum board

I was saddened to hear the news this morning about the disbanding of a board dedicated to raising money for a Santa Fe Railroad museum.

However, I got to thinking about the sequence of recent events.

After the board had backed out of a plan to install the museum on the second floor of the Santa Fe Building, it looked at space at the former Santa Fe Depot near the Civic Center. Then the city purchased the depot for as yet undisclosed reasons. Then the Potter County Commissioners Court, namely Commissioner Mercy Merguia, began asking questions about the money the board had raised; Merguia sought an accounting of the funds.

Now this. The board has disbanded.

It’s fair to ask: Is there a connection between the funds inquiry and the disbanding of the board? Is there a there there?

Walter Wolfram, an Amarillo lawyer, has been the front man for the fundraising effort and he expressed sadness that board had been unable to make significant progress toward establishing a museum.

I share his sadness.

The Santa Fe Railroad played a huge role in the development of this region. It moved freight in the form of harvested agriculture products from the Panhandle to points all across the country throughout much of the first half of the 20th century. The rail company had a division headquarters at the Santa Fe Building in downtown Amarillo. Its corporate presence here was huge.

Then it vanished. The Santa Fe Building went dark in the mid-1970s and remained that way until Potter County bought it for $400,000, renovated it and located several county offices in it.

But there’s no museum. Now there’s no board of directors to oversee raising money to pay for it.

Amarillo can do better than turn its back on the concept of a museum dedicated to such an important part of this region’s history.

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Could this memoir have waited?

John McCain isn’t exactly a friend of Barack Obama. I’ve had this nagging notion that McCain hasn’t gotten over getting drubbed by the then-young senator from Illinois in their 2008 campaign for the presidency.

The Arizona U.S. senator, though, posits an interesting thought about a memoir that is critical of his former campaign adversary. He said today the author of “Duty,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, should have waited until the end of the Afghanistan War to release this tell-all tale.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/12/john-mccain-robert-gates_n_4585156.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037

It is puzzling, some have argued, that a former defense chief — who was asked to stay on when the new commander in chief took charge in 2009 — would be so harshly critical of his former boss at this time in history.

These kinds of memoirs do reverberate around the world. The United States is seeking to wind down its longest-running war, seeking to hand combat operations over to the Afghans who have everything to gain and lose in this struggle.

Does this memoir undercut that effort? Does it place men and women in harm’s way in additional peril at some undefined level?

I’m not sure when it’s ever right to publish a memoir that criticizes the commander in chief while military operations are still on-going.

I do respect John McCain’s view on these matters, given his own extensive and distinguished military career.

Now that the book is out and the full-throated chatter on it has commenced, time will tell if it does any damage in the field.

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Big wind conjures up grim images

Whenever the wind blows hard across the Texas Panhandle — as it is doing today — a new set of images pops into my mind.

I think of the Dust Bowl. These are images that didn’t enter my mind until we moved here 19 years ago.

Some of my friends here actually remember the Dust Bowl. It occurred over the span of about eight years starting around 1933. It’s been called history’s worst manmade disaster. It was a beaut.

Two things happened simultaneously during that time: The wind started to blow and the rain stopped falling. It produced a condition across several states that was worsened by some of the most incredibly bad farming practices known to man. Humans settled here and decided to plow up native grasslands to plant crops, such as wheat and corn.

I guess no one told them back then about the reason God put the grass here in the first place: It was to keep the dirt in place while the wind blew. Without the grass roots dug deep into the dirt, the top soil would blow away.

Then the wind came — and seemingly never left. It blew and blew. And the rain? Well, it didn’t come in amounts sufficient to dampen the soil to keep it from blowing away.

Eventually, state and federal agriculture experts would introduce plowing techniques that would minimize the top soil loss. Those grasslands would be restored, never to be upset again by people who learned a terrible lesson in land management.

It all happened right here in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, in Kansas, eastern New Mexico and eastern Colorado, as well as in Nebraska.

The suffering among the residents was unfathomable. “Dust pneumonia” killed the very young and the very old. People’s livelihoods literally were blown into the next state. Livestock starved to death. Farmers and ranchers who couldn’t make a living packed up everything they owned and moved out as quickly as they could.

Those who stayed became living testaments to raw courage.

Many of them have remained. They are old now. Some might have some short-term memory issues, but I’m quite certain many of them recall vividly how it was to grow up in the hell that came over this land.

I wonder how they must feel whenever they see the wind blow as it is today. Do they shrug? Do they laugh it off? Do they cringe at the horrible memory of what happened in the old days?

Whatever their reaction, I am humbled to live among them today.

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Cornyn running against … President Obama?

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn has just let Texans know how seriously he views the challenge from his right.

Not very seriously at all, or so it appears.

Cornyn has released a TV spot that talks not about any of the people running against him in the March 4 Republican primary. He blasts President Obama.

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/feed/12395410/

It’s not surprising, perhaps, to see this kind of strategy begin to play out. The more a powerful incumbent says about an opponent, the more publicity the opponent gets. I refer to U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Friendswood, who’s emerging as the chief primary challenger to Cornyn.

The incumbent isn’t about to give Stockman any mention at all. Why should he? Doing so elevates Stockman’s profile; it gives him attention; it provides him with grist of his own to use against Cornyn.

It doesn’t hurt that Cornyn is holding up the president as a “foe,” given Barack Obama’s unpopularity among most Texans.

The language in the ad is harsh. In my view it’s overly harsh, but that’s just me.

However, it makes for extremely smart politics from John Cornyn.

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Another ‘Gate’ scandal joins the ranks

Now it’s become “Bridgegate.”

Please.

Now many “gate” scandals — or controversies, if you will — must we endure?

I refer, of course, to the boiling mess involving the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge this past year. Did the Republican governor of New Jersey order the lanes closed to get back at the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, N.J. because the mayor didn’t endorse the governor for re-election? If so, what will be the consequences? If not, will the media let the story die?

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/chris-christies-bridgegate-guide-102033.html?hp=l6

It’s become yet another in an interminable line of “gate” stories.

I feel compelled to remind everyone there is only one “gate” scandal that matters. The Watergate scandal of 1972-74 brought down the 37th president of the United States, Richard Nixon.

On June 17, 1972, a team of bungling burglars broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel and office complex in Washington. They got caught. Then over the course of the next few days — we would learn later — the president of the United States ordered federal authorities to quash the investigation into whether the president’s re-election campaign or the White House were complicit in any way.

Therein launched a constitutional crisis of enormous proportions. The debate has swirled ever since ass to whether it merited the attention it got. I believe it did. President Nixon used the power of his office to stymie a federal criminal probe. That’s a very big deal indeed.

He quit the presidency on Aug. 9. 1974, thus ending the Watergate scandal for keeps … or so we all thought and hoped.

The “gate” part of that terrible time lives on as goofballs attach the suffix to every political controversy large and/or small that comes along.

I’m weary of it. There can be only one “gate” scandal. It was enough of a doozy to stand alone forever.

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Ariel Sharon, the warrior’s warrior

Ariel Sharon was fearless in his belief in Israel.

He fought valiantly for its creation and fought against its enemies when they attacked it. Sharon, who died this week after lying in a coma for years, made no apologies for anything he ever said or did on behalf of his country.

As New York Times essayist Ronen Bergman notes, Sharon could have been the one to make peace with the Palestinians. Somehow he fell short of that noble goal.

I’m kind of reminded of the axiom of how “only Nixon could go to China,” referring to the notable cold warrior President Richard Nixon opening the diplomatic door to the People’s Republic of China, governed by the hated communists. President Nixon made the correct overture in the early 1970s and it changed the geopolitical landscape forever.

Sharon, who served as Israel’s prime minister, also had that kind of credibility is it related to the Palestinians, with whom he fought on the battlefield. He could have been the one to broker a deal with the hated neighbors who have been committed to the destruction of Israel.

As it turned out, it fell to another battle-hardened warrior, Israelis Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, to reach a peace accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader Yasser Arafat. The two men shook hands at the White House in a ceremony moderated by President Bill Clinton.

Two years later, Rabin would die at the hand of a rabid Israeli nationalist assassin who hated him for the deal he reached with Arafat.

Would such a fate have befallen Ariel Sharon? He could have shown additional courage by striking a peace deal. Sadly, he didn’t take fullest advantage of his own Nixon moment.

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Apology accepted, Mr. McCombs

Red McCombs says he’s sorry now for the outburst he leveled at the University of Texas’s hiring of Charlie Strong as its next head football coach.

I accept your apology, sir.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/red-mccombs-sorry-0

I’ll stipulate, of course, that I never attended UT. I’ve lived in Texas for just shy of 30 years now, so I consider myself a Texan, given that my wife and I pay our taxes here, our sons came of age here and graduated from college here and I’ve watched a fair amount of Texas football.

McCombs, the zillionaire San Antonio auto dealer and UT booster, popped off about being “kicked in the face” when UT hired Strong from the University of Louisville. He questioned whether Strong had the credentials to be a head coach.

Now he regrets saying those mean things.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/10272385/red-mccombs-apologizes-criticizing-charlie-strong-hire

UT has a new athletic director, Steve Patterson, who’s first major hire suggests he isn’t going to listen as intently to deep-pocketed boosters as some of his predecessors had done.

What’s more, as Paul Burka notes in the link attached to this blog, UT has now embarked toward a new era by hiring its first African-American head football coach.

Hook ’em, Coach Strong.

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Jobs numbers may help insurance fight

December’s disappointing jobs report may have a beneficial consequence for a lingering political fight.

The White House is bickering — nothing new there — with congressional Republicans over whether to extend unemployment benefits for long-term jobless Americans for another three months.

The Labor Department then released figures Friday that showed job growth crept up by just 74,000 in the past month, far below what economists had predicted. The White House thinks extending the insurance for long-term unemployed is the decent thing to do in an economic environment that is still struggling to gain completely firm footing.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/december-2013-jobs-report-white-house-response-102020.html?hp=l16

Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers keep insisting on government budget cuts to pay for the insurance extension.

White House officials shrugged at the disappointing numbers, but say any refusal to help unemployed Americans is going to damage the recovery, which they insist is occurring.

It’s hard to dispute the trend over the past two years that job growth has returned and that the economy is recovering from the worst recession in many Americans’ memory.

Congress ought to do the right thing by those seeking work by lending a hand where it is needed. Those paltry jobs numbers suggest the recovery still needs a boost.

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