local news

First time for anything

ROANOKE, Va. — I came to this wonderful city in the Blue Ridge Mountains with the noblest of intentions … to attend a funeral for the son of long time and dear friends of mine.

It all was going swimmingly. Not a glitch in sight. None expected. I have a nice hotel room near where my friends live. It is near the airport where I will depart Roanoke in a couple of days.

Then it happened …

I piled into my “low rider” rental vehicle. Pushed the start button. Nothing happened. Zero! The car is frozen. Nothing works. No dash lights. It’s stuck in “park.”

That saying about the “best-laid plans” is ringiing in my mind’s ear right now.

I’m going to miss the funeral. With a stroke of luck I might be able to attend the graveside service. I called the car rental company. They’re sending a tow-truck driver to haul the piece of mule dookey away. I’ll be able to get a replacement vehicle.

This is the first time this has ever happened to me. I’m going to chalk it up to one of life’s mysteries. I won’t make a big deal about it when I see my friends.

Just wanted to share it with you.

national news

Compromise: not a four-letter word

A word to the wise is in order as Congress prepares to end the ridiculous closure of the federal government.

It is that “compromise is not a four-letter word.”

The U.S. Senate approved a compromise spending bill with a 60-40 vote and sent it to the House, where it likely will pass with a bipartisan majority before it goes to Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.

Holdouts on the left don’t like certain elements of the bill. Holdouts on the right are of the same mind. They are angry with the bipartisan centrists who have said “enough is enough” and want to return the government to its fully staffed capability.

I understand the idea of governing on principle. I do not understand why those principles become so hardened that they prevent any kind of governance to occur. That’s what happened with the government shut down for 40 days, setting a record.

Congress should not have been allowed to collect its salary while federal employees were being denied their pay while continuing to report for work.

The deal that appears set to be worked out will keep the government running until late January. Then we’ll likely have more of this foolishness.

Don’t pat yourselves on the back members of Congress. You did nothing to crow about.

Uncategorized

Vets get overdue respect

High Plains Blogger has called attention over the years to my favorite veteran … that would be my Dad, a World War II Navy vet who saw his share of hell on Earth during his years fighting fascists.

I occasionally speak a bit about my own military experience, which pales in comparison to what Dad endured.

Today, I want to discuss the growing up of the nation, which this week celebrates the millions of men and women who have served in the military. It took a war that we didn’t win on the battlefield for Americans to stoop to new lows in the way it treated its veterans. Many of my colleagues came home to actual scorn from Americans because they followed lawful orders and committed — in the uneducated eyes of their fellow citizens — crimes against humanity.

Baby killers? My ass …

This year veterans are bound to feel love and respect they were denied when we came home from the Vietnam War. I won’t dwell on what happened in the bad old days. Instead, I will call attention to the respect coming from TV commentators who, two generations ago, likely would be leading the jeers intended for the returning veterans.

Whatever. We’ve all grown up. We are more mature these days. I will accept whatever thanks that could come my way as we celebrate those who suit up to defend this nation and protect the rights we all enjoy.

national news

Wanting to repeal the 22nd

Time for an admission that I hate making, but I’ll do so anyway out of fairness to the integrity of the issue at hand.

As I watch the 44th president of the United States hit the campaign stump for fellow Democrats, I am filled partially with the desire to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, the one that limits presidents to two elected terms.

Barack Obama still has the chops to stir ’em up. He can deliver applause lines like no other politician I have witnessed in the 40-some years I have been covering and watching presidential politics.

Republicans in Congress had grown fearful of an imperial presidency after Franklin Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term in 1944. He took office in March of 1945 and died a month later. FDR was a dead man walking, suffering from blood clots, one of which traveled to his brain and took him out. The GOP intended to preserve the presidency for the common American who could seek the office.

Then we got the clown we have now. Donald Trump won in 2016, lost in 2020, only to refuse to accept that he lost. He instigated the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. He won again in 2024.

Democrats now are turning to the one home-run hitter sitting on the bench. He’s a former president who reminds us how Republicans used to criticize Democrats for even wanting to talk to Vladimir Putin. Now the former KGB spy is having a “Bromance with Trump,” but that’s OK!

Trouble with Trump, though, is that POTUS No. 47 doesn’t give a crap about the obvious truth coming from Obama … not to mention all the other presidential predecessors.

We won’t repeal the 22nd Amendment. I am actually fine with it. I just wish at times the part of me that resides in Fantasyland could affect public policy in real time.

crime news

MAGA festers in ignorance

The ignorance of the morons who comprise many of Donald Trump’s MAGA base continues to astonish me in ways I never thought possible.

New York City voters elected a Muslim, a democratic socialist as its next mayor. What was the reaction among some of the MAGA cultists who heard this news?

One of them, a member of Congress, said out loud that he wants Zohair Mamdani deported. Yep. He wants to banish him to the country of his birth. I believe it’s Sudan.

One little problem with that idiotic notion. Mamdani has been a naturalized U.S. citizen since he was boy. You can’t deport a U.S. citizen. Good grief, the man wants to live in the United States. He wants to pay his taxes here. He wants to educate his children here. He wants to govern the nation’s largest, most sophisticated, most cosmopolitan city.

This MAGA idiocy reminds of when Nikki Haley, the Republican governor South Carolina, agreed to take down the Confederate flags in her state, drawing calls for her deportation. Wait! She was born in South Carolina to parents of Indian descent. I guess her parentage made the all-American governor a deportation target.

You cannot negotiate with a political movement that comprises so many of these morons!

military news

Medal of Honor museum: Worth seeing repeatedly

I spent part of my day today touring a museum I had seen only a few weeks ago for the first time.

I wanted to show a friend of mine what real heroism looks like. Truth is, I cannot get enough of those tales of valor and gallantry.

The National Medal of Honor Museum sits across the highway from AT&T Stadium. The exhibit seems inexhaustible. I went through it a few months ago with my brother-in-law. The museum floor seemed to contain even more exhibits today than it did earlier this year.

I have learned something important about the Medal of Honor recipients, which is that they are motivated to act above and beyond the call by a single factor: their own mortality.

Don’t misunderstand me on this. They are driven by the love they have for their brothers in arms. I get that. As President Obama noted during a Medal of Honor presentation he conducted near the end of his presidency, citing Scripture that tells us that “there’s no greater love than that of a man willing to die for his friends.”

These men all acted as well out of their own sense of mortality. So many of them have recalled the moment they responded with extraordinary heroism that in the moment, they were certain they were going to die, so given that belief they acted like the heroes they became.

They are immortalized in a fabulous exhibit in Arlington, Texas. I will return again and again.

Uncategorized

Trump has gone MIA

What in the name of blathering idiocy has become of Donald J. Trump, the self-proclaimed dealmaker in chief, the guy who always vows to negotiate his way out of any scrape?

The dude has yet to show his overfed puss in this fight over health insurance, food for the neediest Americans. It has resulted in a shutting down of the federal government. It is jeopardizing air travel as we enter the busiest travel season of the entire year. This is the guy who supposedly wrote “The Art of the Deal” in which he boasts about the deals he has struck.

Oh, wait. I forgot. The guy also is a pathological liar who cannot be trusted to tell the truth on anything, at any time, on any subject … no matter how trivial.

We’ve trudged through the previous record for government shutdowns. We’re now in virgin territory. I am one American who is scheduled to board a jetliner in a few days and fly east for a couple of days and nights. It is imperative that I arrive at my destination on the day I said I would be there. I am not entirely sure I’ll be able to do so.

Why? Because the self-proclaimed master of his domain refuses to get off his ass long enough to make a few phone calls and push his Republican sycophants to work on behalf of those who put them in power.

political news

Well done, Mme. Speaker

Nancy Pelosi took the gavel to lead the U.S. House of Representatives at a time when Republicans and Democrats were still able to speak kindly of each other.

Take, for example, when in 2007, Republican President Bush prepared to deliver his State of the Union speech and he began with a statement that he would be the “first president in history to begin his speech with these words: ‘Madame Speaker.'”

Pelosi, a Democrat from San Francisco, became the first — and so far only — woman to become speaker of the House. The chamber — all of it — erupted into applause as Speaker Pelosi basked in the glow that shined on her.

Pelosi recently announced she won’t seek another term as a member of Congress when her current term runs out at the end of next year. Nancy Pelosi was as consequential a speaker as any we have had in U.S. history.

Working at times with a paper-thin Democratic majority, she managed to shepherd key legislation through the House and onto the president’s desk. I am thinking at this moment of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. It was the highlight of President Obama’s domestic agenda and the speaker of the House earned all the plaudits she got in the moment.

Her time wielding the gavel wasn’t all peaches and cream. She was a fierce partisan. She had her scrapes with Donald J. Trump during his first term in the White House. Through all those battles, she kept her poise and remained strong against the bullying tactics that Trump likes to employ.

Pelosi now goes by the meaningless title of “speaker emerita,” which is a symbolic term honoring her time in the speaker’s chair. I’ll skip using that term to refer to the former speaker and simply wish her Godspeed and good wishes as she cruises toward a well-earned retirement.

political news

A word of caution

For those expecting High Plains Blogger to offer a full-throated endorsement of the California vote supporting Proposition 50 this week, let’s instead heed a word of caution over what we might have unleashed in this country.

It is a warning of rigged elections on both sides of the chasm.

Prop 50 was California’s answer to the Texas Legislature’s decision to approve a redistrict plan that could produce five more Republican seats in Congress. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the Texas effort cannot stand. So, he launched an effort to ask voters to approve a statewide redistricting plan that counters the Texas decision. Californians did … in a huge way.

What they have done is given the California Assembly carte blanche to redraw lines that would enable the election of more Democrats to Congress to counter an anticipated GOP surge in Texas and other so-called “red states.” More “blue states” are planning similar efforts for the 2026 election cycle.

Do you get where I am going with this? I support the concept of electing more politicians who would oppose the chicanery being foisted on us by the Donald Trump administration. I am deeply troubled that Democrats are responding with an effort to “preserve democracy” with a process that is as rigged as the one Republicans are foisting on millions of other Americans.

That ain’t democracy, kids.

I am left to recall the words of the great Native American philosopher, Tonto, who would tell the Lone Ranger, “Two wrongs don’t make it right.” The path to restoring our democratic process should be more of a challenge than just rigging an election to produce candidates to our liking.

International news

Don’t close consulate!

Benjamin Netanyahu was so upset over the election of New York City’s first Muslim mayor, why … he is threatening to close the Israeli consulate office in the Big Apple.

Please heed this advice from an American patriot who once spent five weeks in the enchanting nation: Don’t do it, Mr. Prime Minister!

If ever there was a time to keep the lines of communication open and unobstructed, it is right now. NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s election was a stunner, for sure, to those who value the close U.S.-Israeli ties. I happen to one American who does value our alliance with Israel.

I also happen to believe it would be a mistake to close the consulate in the nation’s largest city, which gives Israel direct contact with millions of Jewish-Americans who call NYC home. Closing the consulate would be an act of supreme petulance at a time when we need maturity and reason at the highest levels of international diplomacy.

I don’t know it the Israeli prime minister was just venting his anger or if he intends to follow through with his threat. This much is clear. We live in a democratic republic where we should accept election results for better or for worse.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu needs to settle down, perhaps call the new mayor and seek a way to end the ongoing crises in the Middle East. It won’t happen if he closes the consulate in a fit of rage.

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