Media should challenge pols? Sure, except for one thing …

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President Obama has thrown down on the national media, which he said aren’t doing their job properly.

The current political climate, the president said, is due partly because the media haven’t challenged presidential candidates’ falsehoods, outrageousness and manipulation.

Obama spoke to a media gathering and said the rest of the world is dumbfounded at what’s happening to the “crazy politics” that has infected the United States.

Hold ’em accountable

Here’s part of what the president said: “A job well done is about more than just handing someone a microphone. It’s to probe and to question and to dig deeper and to demand more. The electorate would be better served if that happened. It would be better served if billions of dollars in free media came with serious accountability, especially when politicians issue unworkable plans or make promises they cannot keep.”

Got it, Mr. President.

But here’s the catch. The media are considered part of what’s ticking off much of the electorate.

The media have sought to hold the candidates “accountable,” as you suggest. They have challenge absurd assertions by a number of the candidates, only to be outshouted by the angry legions of voters who continue to stand by their candidates’ original absurd assertion.

As someone who’s still associated with the media, I happen to believe the president is correct to assert that the media need to do better. We always can do more to provide context and to check all the facts before running with them.

It’s the suggestion, though, that greater media scrutiny — in this particular climate — is going to flip the switch on in voters’ minds and make them see the light, the truth and the way.

Instead, they’re increasingly likely these days to “double down” on what the candidate says and then blast the media for “lying” about their guy’s message.

I believe we are in a classic “Catch-22” situation.

Thanks anyway for the advice, Mr. President.

Feeling unchained these days

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I had a marvelous opportunity this evening to speak to some nice folks about the state of play in media, politics, and the world in general.

The Potter/Randall Democratic Club asked me to offer some observations about this and that.

They figured I needed something to do now that I’ve been kinda/sorta retired for more than three years. A number of the folks there are acquaintances of mine. A couple of them were contributors to the Amarillo Globe-News opinion pages over the years, writing letters and sending in guest columns for my consideration.

I truly enjoyed meeting new folks and getting reacquainted with old friends and sharing some thoughts about the condition of our political and public policy world.

It occurred to me as I began my remarks that one of the true joys about being able to speak for myself is that I no longer represent someone or something else. I no longer am on a media outlet’s payroll, which enables me to speak my mind and to offer thoughts on this blog.

Sure, I do write for a couple of broadcast outlets these days; I write part time as a freelancer for KFDA NewsChannel 10 and Panhandle PBS, which means that I am not counted as being employed by them.

It occurred to me as I began my remarks that I am officially unfettered, untethered, unencumbered, unleashed, unbound, unrestricted, uninhibited … well, you get the idea. I get to speak my mind — whether I’m standing at a podium or offering comments through this blog.

Sure, my career as a full-time print journalist ended unhappily for me back in August 2012. I wasn’t entirely sure at the very moment I realized my career had ended whether I could bounce back. I did manage to pick myself up; I got off the deck and along the way I discovered a side of my adaptability I didn’t realize I possessed.

Thus, am I now glad my tenure at the Globe-News came to a screeching halt?

You bet I am.

Al Franken for VP? Let’s think about this

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Al Franken for vice president?

Oh boy. It’s almost too hilarious to consider. Then again, so was Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy once thought of as a side-splitting joke.

Bill Scher, writing for Politico, thinks the political dynamics have been thrown into the drink with Trump’s frontrunning GOP presidential campaign.

So, according to Scher, Hillary Clinton needs to think seriously about appointing the man who gained fame as Stuart Smalley, the “Saturday Night Live” character who turned melodramatic modesty into an art form.

Franken now has a serious job, as a U.S. senator from Minnesota.

His committee hearing questioning of witnesses can be hilarious. He also makes serious points.

Franken is an unapologetic populist. He’s also backing Clinton, rather than Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Scher’s point in pushing Franken out front as a potential VP nominee is that Trump has changed the political calculus at every level. Franken would be seen as every bit as serious as Trump … which isn’t saying much, given that Trump’s circus act has turned the GOP campaign into a markedly unserious endeavor.

I am not in favor of promoting candidates for high public office for the sake of doing something brash and unthinkable. I like Sen. Franken. He’s a solid family man and a damn funny comedian. He writes great jokes, which he did for many years before becoming an on-camera sensation with “SNL.”

The question keeps popping into my head: Is Al “Stuart Smalley” Franken ready to become president if he is forced to assume that office?

My heart wants to say “yes.” My head says “no.”

As for Donald J. Trump, every fiber of my being tells me he is unsuited at every level imaginable for the office he is seeking.

 

Pipe down, Fidel; your time is up

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Fidel Castro apparently holds a grudge.

The former strongman/dictator/supreme leader of Cuba isn’t quite so keen on President Obama’s recent visit to the nation.

While many of Cuba’s current leaders — such as Fidel’s brother, Raul, the country’s current strongman/dictator etc. — have expressed pleasure at Obama’s visit, ol’ Fidel isn’t quite so enamored of the idea.

He lambasted President Obama’s visit, saying that Cuba doesn’t need gifts from “the empire” to succeed.

Obama didn’t visit Fidel while he was in Cuba. Perhaps if he had he could have charmed the irascible revolutionary leader who came to power in 1959 and only recently handed the reins of government over to his kid brother Raul.

Fidel Castro’s ironfisted rule outlasted 10 U.S. presidential administrations. All of them, until the current president, had decided to maintain the economic and diplomatic embargo on Cuba.

I agree with Fidel that the embargo was useless and irrelevant during the last quarter-century of its existence. Its practicality disappeared along with the Soviet Union in 1991; in truth, it really wasn’t a viable option for the United States predating that event.

It’s weird, though, to wonder why Fidel Castro isn’t yet willing to bury the hatchet in his on-going conflict with the United States.

Settle down, El Comandante. Life is going to get better in your nation now that we’ve resumed travel, trade and communication with Cuba. For that, you should be grateful.

 

Ga. governor vetoes anti-LGBT law … yes!

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Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has done the right thing by vetoing House Bill 757, which sought to give faith-based business owners the option of denying jobs and services to gays, bisexuals and transgendered individuals.

Those who supported the bill said it protects religious liberty. Those who oppose it said it discriminates needlessly against Americans who shouldn’t be denied their rights as citizens.

There had been reports of pressure being applied by HB 757 foes who said the bill could result in the loss of business and jobs in Georgia.

I’m glad the anti-bill folks won this argument.

Gov. Deal, a Republican, denied he was reacting to pressure from either or both sides of the divide. According to CNN: His decision, he said, was “about the character of our state and the character of our people. Georgia is a welcoming state. It is full of loving, kind and generous people. … I intend to do my part to keep it that way. For that reason I will veto House Bill 757.”

I accept that rationale for doing the right thing by the residents of his state who comprise the whole range of humanity — and all sexual orientations.

One of the more fascinating responses to this doing-business-with-gay-people came not long ago from Ohio Gov. John Kasich, one of three men running for the Republican presidential nomination.

During a debate with the other candidates, the question came to Kasich about legislation allowing business owners to deny serving gay individuals or gay couples. Kasich’s response was about as compassionate as it gets.

He said he believes in “traditional marriage,” but said that those who are in business of serving the public need to understand the differences among all people. Some of those differences involve sexual orientation.

He said that if he were put in that position as a business owner, he would serve a gay individual or a gay couple and then would “pray for them” — privately, seeking his own counsel with God.

I hope that’s part of the complexities of the issue that has driven Gov. Deal to veto this bill approved by his state’s legislature.

Let’s not seek to interpret what is in one man’s heart and soul.

Whatever the reasons, Deal knows what they are. His veto speaks volumes all by itself.

‘Shame,’ ’embarrassment’ become campaign themes

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Oh, for shame!

The remaining men vying for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination appear to have become embarrassments to the very people whose support they will need this fall when one of them square off against the Democratic Party presidential nominee.

What in the world has become of the process that selects major-party nominees seeking to become the most powerful officeholder in the whole world?

It has become a sideshow, a circus act, a schoolyard fight, a proverbial food fight.

Voters should demand better of the candidates. Then again, perhaps they secretly like what they’re hearing and seeing.

The Republican side of this carnival act has been particularly disgraceful. And that is coming from Republicans who’ve watched it.

GOP pollster Frank Luntz asked viewers who watched one of the Republican debates, the one in Detroit, to summarize what they saw. The Washington Post reported: “Sophomoric,” “embarrassment,” “disappointing,” “shameful,” “despicable,” “angering” and “schoolyard brawl” were some of the responses he received during a broadcast on Fox News Channel.

As one Republican told the Post — and this guy is a Ted Cruz supporter — the candidates need to be talking about ISIS and the “loss of freedom.”

Instead, he noted, they were engaging in the kind of talk one hears on junior high school playgrounds.

Who and/or what is the culprit?

Have social media become the communications vehicle of choice for too many Americans? We appear to be relying on Twitter feeds and Facebook posts to learn things — most of it irrelevant to actual policy — about these candidates.

Have their been too many of these Republican and Democratic primary debates? It might be that the candidates have run out of creative ways to argue the fine points of policy and have been left to resort to the kind of shameful name-calling and ridicule we’ve been hearing.

Do the candidates themselves deserve blame? Pundits keep talking about Donald J. Trump’s lack of depth and his mastery of media manipulation. Then there’s the belief among many that he is a barely closeted sexist, xenophobe and racist. The response from Ted Cruz to Trump’s insults has been, well, less than stellar as well.

The campaign should have been dignified. It has been everything except that.

These individuals are seeking to become commander in chief of the world’s greatest military machine. They want to become head of state of what many of us believe is the greatest nation ever created. They seek to lead a nation of 300-plus million citizens into a still-uncertain future.

And this is what we’re getting?

 

Cruz gets fascinating Texas endorsement

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Say what you will about Chris Christie and Ben Carson endorsing Donald J. Trump after Trump trashed both of them during their joint Republican presidential primary run.

Ted Cruz of Texas has just scored a fascinating endorsement as well from a fellow former competitor. Only this guy didn’t run against him in this year’s GOP presidential primary. Oh, no! This fellow was the original foe to get “Cruzed,” as some of us in Texas have said about the treatment he got from the junior U.S. senator.

Former Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is backing the Cruz Missile.

This endorsement might not have the legs it does in Texas. Take it from me: This is a big deal.

Cruz decided in 2011 to run for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison. The prohibitive favorite to succeed her was Dewhurst. He had served well as lieutenant governor and as land commissioner before that. He had lots of money and lots of political connections, dating back to his pre-public service career as a mover and shaker in the Houston area.

Dewhurst backs former foe

Then he ran into the Ted Cruz buzz saw.

Cruz campaigned against Dewhurst more or less the way he has campaigned for the presidency: He cast Dewhurst as part of the Texas political establishment and promised to change the climate if Texans elected him to the Senate.

He called Dewhurst a dreaded “moderate” because he managed to work pretty well with Texas Senate Democrats while presiding as lieutenant governor over the upper legislative chamber. To the ears of Texas Republican primary voters, he might as well have called Dewhurst a child molester.

Dewhurst responded by trying to outflank Cruz on the right, which is pretty damn hard to do, given Cruz’s reputation as a far-right TEA Party golden boy.

It didn’t work for Dewhurst. Cruz beat him in the primary.

Dewhurst, though, has forgiven Cruz for the rough treatment he got.

Will any of that matter down the road? It’s interesting to me that Dewhurst decided to endorse Cruz now … nearly a month after the state held its primary elections.

Cruz already has won the Texas primary.

Don’t look for Dewhurst to campaign much for his new best friend Ted Cruz as the primary campaign continues its journey. For the rest of the country, the rangy former Texas lieutenant governor’s rhetoric endorsing Ted Cruz won’t mean much.

It does speak, though, to how political wounds manage to heal.

Dewhurst can boast, I suppose, of being the first of Ted Cruz’s political victims — which grants him a fascinating, if somewhat dubious honor.

Hey, the Taliban really are terrorists!

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Consider this an open letter to CIA director John Brennan.

Dear Mr. Brennan:

You need to rethink your cockamamie notion that the Taliban is not a terrorist organization. Now!

Have you heard the news? The Taliban exploded a bomb in a park in Lahore. It killed 65 Christians who were gathered there. Most of the victims were women and children.

Attack aimed at Christians

Let’s see. The attack occurred on Christianity’s holiest holiday. The Taliban actually stated it that it was targeting Christians. The victims were defenseless against the attack.

I do believe, Mr. Director, that the act committed today constitutes a bona fide act of terror. It was aimed precisely at non-combatants and its aim now is to put other such individuals or groups of individuals on notice that they may be next.

This is worth bringing up because of the exchange negotiated with the Taliban that brought about the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who’d been held by the Taliban for five years after he walked off his post in Afghanistan.

I’m sure you recall that White House press flack Josh Earnest said the United States “negotiated” the release because it doesn’t consider the Taliban to be a terrorist organization. We don’t “negotiate with terrorists,” Earnest told us.

Fair enough.

Except that the Taliban for decades has terrorized women and children. Yes, it has resorted to violence against those who oppose its repression.

Now we have this incident of terror in the park in Lahore, Pakistan.

It was committed by the Taliban. The group sought to terrorize innocent people.

If this is not the action of a terrorist organization, then no such organization exists anywhere on the planet. We all know that’s not the case.

The Taliban needs to be treated as the terrorists they are — and always have been.

 

Miracles occur just like that

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Miracles generally are those things that defy explanation.

Spontaneous remission from deadly disease is a miracle. Doctors cannot explain it. That’s one example.

Another one might have occurred this morning when we awoke in parts of the Texas Panhandle. We found snow blanketing our lawns and rooftops.

The miracle? Well someone asked this morning via social media why it didn’t snow on the streets and sidewalks.

I thought the same thing when I looked out as the sun came up this morning. Why is our quiet residential street dry? Same with the sidewalks. They were dry as a bone, too.

My answer to this person was that it just might be of those many mysteries of life, although I’m sure some smarty pants who reads this blog will come with a perfectly logical meteorological explanation for what we saw early today.

Go for it.

I’ll just consider it a miracle of sort.

Besides, today is Easter. Scripture tells us about the miracle involving Jesus Christ’s resurrection that occurred on this day nearly 2,000 years ago.

How fitting. Don’t you think?

 

Hey, Hillary … take a look at what these guys are saying

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Hillary Rodham Clinton may be the inevitable Democratic Party presidential nominee.

It’s not a done deal just yet, given Sen. Bernie Sanders’s big wins this weekend in Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. Clinton, though, still has the big lead in delegates and the primary campaign is heading into more Clinton-friendly territory.

But here’s the thing, according to Bill Moyers (yes, that Bill Moyers) and Michael Winship: She remains captive to the big-money interests that are poisoning the political system. It’s time for Clinton to stand up, spit into her palms and then do what she needs to do, they say, which is call for the immediate resignation of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

They ask a valid question: Is she the candidate of the past or of the future?

If it’s the latter, then she needs to demonstrate it. Forcefully.

These two figures — Emmanuel and Schultz — represent what’s wrong with the Democratic Party, say Moyers and Winship.

Emmanuel’s tenure as mayor has been rocked by controversy. The shooting death of an African-American teenager, Laquan McDonald, went unreported for months. Laquan was shot to death by Chicago police while he was strolling down the street. He presented no weapon; his hands were in the air. A cop shot him multiple times dead in the street.

Emmanuel then took responsibility for the shooting, given that he’s the mayor and the chief of police answers to him.

But before he became mayor he was a three-term Illinois congressman and White House chief of staff for President Obama. He is soaked in corporate money. Emmanuel, Moyers and Winship write, “chaired the fundraising Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (calling on his Wall Street sources to get in on the gravy by electing so-called New Democrats over New Deal Democrats), and soon was back in the White House as Obama’s chief of staff. There, he infamously told a strategy meeting of liberal groups and administration types that the liberals were ‘retarded’ for planning to run attack ads against conservative Democrats resisting Obamacare. Classy.”

He’s a longtime ally of Hillary and Bill Clinton, which is why he continues to loom so large on the Democratic Party landscape.

Schultz is just as tainted by money, say Moyers and Winship, who write that “she embodies the tactics that have eroded the ability of Democrats to once again be the party of the working class. As Democratic National Committee chair she has opened the floodgates for Big Money, brought lobbyists into the inner circle and oiled all the moving parts of the revolving door that twirls between government service and cushy jobs in the world of corporate influence.”

Of the two essayists, Moyers — of course — is the better known. He’s an East Texan who came to prominence during the Lyndon Johnson administration, where he served his fellow Texan as White House press secretary. He then went on to become a fixture on public television.

The Sanders campaign has lit a fire all by itself with the candidate’s call for reform of the political financing system. His sole aim is to finance presidential campaigns solely with public funds, while seeking to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that unleashes corporate donors.

Moyers and Winship make the case fairly persuasively that Hillary Clinton is too wedded to the deep-pocketed donor class that they say has corrupted the political system.

She well might want to consider seriously what these men are suggesting, which is to cut her ties to the past and demonstrate that she’s the Democratic Party’s best hope for the future.