Monthly Archives: May 2016

State news

Empty nest syndrome is overrated

thEPL1UGUL

A friend of mine just posted something on social media about her son moving away for the summer.

The young man is 21 and Mom is feeling “sad” about her nest becoming empty.

Hmmm. I thought about that for a moment, feeling an initial twinge of guilt.

It has to do with our own sons’ departure from our nest. One of them left in the late summer of 1991 after graduating from high school. He went off to college, which was about a two-hour drive from our home in Beaumont.

The empty nest syndromeĀ quite set in because we had another son still in high school.

He graduated the following spring and in late 1992, we packed him up and moved him all the way to Dallas, where he would attend college.

We dropped him off at the apartment he had rented. We said our goodbyes and he ran across the parking lot, into the darkened hallway … and he was gone.

My wife and I then drove back to Beaumont. It was the longest, quietest five-hour drive we’d ever taken together. We spoke maybe 10 or 12 words the whole time on the road.

Well, this has a happy ending.

We got over it. Our son called us as soon as he got his phone hooked up; cell phones didn’t yet exist. Our other son was doing well at the university he was attending.

It was some point quite soon after Son No. 2 got ensconced in Dallas that we realized: You know, this empty nest thing is pretty cool.

Therein might lie the brief pangs of guilt. Weren’t we supposed to be depressed over empty nest syndrome?

Naww! We were free to do what we wanted. Our sons behaved responsibly (most of the time) while they were away pursuing their studies.

They finished college. They earned their degrees. They both are successful in their chosen careers. One of them now has a family of his own — and we are the proud grandparents of the most gorgeous little girl who ever lived.

So, to my friend who’s now dreading having an empty nest for the first time in her adult life, I’ll just add this: You, too, are likely to learn that life does exist once the kid leaves the nest.

Take it from me … the empty nest syndrome is overrated.

 

Sports news, State news

Football isn’t exactly ‘king’ at Baylor University

briles

The hammer has dropped on two leading figures at Baylor University.

Kenneth Starr has been moved out of the president’s office and “demoted” to the role of Baylor chancellor. I guess within the Baylor system, the chancellor is more of a figurehead than an actual administrator.

Meanwhile, head football coach Art Briles has been “suspended.” Baylor regents, though, said they intend to fire the coach.

What’s more, Baylor Athletic Director Ian McCaw has been placed on probation.

This is a big deal. It centers on a sex scandal at the Waco school.

Two players were convicted of sexual assault. The trouble erupted, though, when allegations surfaced that the school didn’t take the charges seriously enough initially.

“We were horrified by the extent of these acts of sexual violence on our campus,” said Richard Willis, chair of the Baylor Board of Regents. “This investigation revealed the university’s mishandling of reports in what should have been a supportive, responsive and caring environment for students. The depth to which these acts occurred shocked and outraged us.”

And just why is this a big deal? Because, the football program had been rebuilt. Baylor was getting a lot of money because its football team was winning a lot of games. The school rebuilt its stadium. Coach Briles was seen a major celebrity at Baylor.

As for Starr, well, I’ve already commented on the rich irony of his dismissal. Recall that Starr served as special counsel to Congress, which charged him with looking into the Whitewater real estate deal involving President and Mrs. Clinton. The Whitewater probe then morphed into an investigation into a sexual relationship between President Clinton and a young White House intern.

That investigation culminated in the president’s impeachment on charges that he lied to a grand jury.

Sex consumed that investigation … just as it has consumed the university that Starr has led for the past couple of years.

Irony? You bet.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/26/us/baylor-kenneth-starr-art-briles/index.html

This isn’t the first time a big-name football has been taken down by a sex scandal. Penn State University fired the legendary Joe Paterno after one of his assistant coaches, Jerry Sandusky, was accused of sexual abuse of boys. Sandusky has been convicted of multiple felonies and is serving time in prison. The question became: What did JoePa know and when did he know it?

The same thing can be asked of Coach Briles and Kenneth Starr.

Someone has to be held responsible. Who better than two of the men at the top of the chain of command?

national news, political news

‘Enlightened self-interest’ alive and well

Oklahoma_State_Capitol

Oklahoma lawmakers seem to have little difficulty slashingĀ  government spending for agencies that serve the public.

What about those that serve lawmakers?

It seems they have equally little difficulty in boosting money for a particular agency.

According to the Tulsa World, the Oklahoma legislature is considering a 184-percent increase for the Legislative Service Bureau, which provides computer service for the folks who write the laws — and who control state spending.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/capitol_report/most-oklahoma-agencies-see-cuts-but-there-s-a-big/article_b04a453e-9566-5548-a4c8-e8099185400c.html

The increase amounts to $9 million a year.

I understand the need to make sure the state makes legislators’ office payrolls.

But when the state is cutting public service spending while more than doubling spending on an in-house government agency …

I believe this defines “enlightened self-interest.

 

military news, national news, political news

Tell us what you really think, Sen. Cotton

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I will tell you up front I’m not fond of the tone of Sen. Tom Cotton’s critique of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s leadership.

But the freshman Arkansas Republican does make a tremendous point about the hypocrisy that abounds in the U.S. Senate in general and of the hypocrisy he said that Reid has demonstrated.

Cotton made a speech this week in which he condemned Reid’s “cancerous leadership” and wondered out loud how Reid could suggest that a defense bill was being shoved down the throats of senators after he had helped push through the Affordable Care Act — also in the middle of the night.

Check out the video of Cotton’s floor speech. It’s a stem winder.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/25/sen-tom-cotton-really-really-really-doesnt-like-harry-reid/

According to Cotton, Reid has said senators haven’t had time to read the bill. Cotton also noted that many senators didn’t read the ACA, either, before approving it on a “party-line vote.”

“I’m forced to listen to the bitter, vulgar, incoherent ramblings of the minority leader,” Cotton said. “Normally, like every other American, I ignore them. I can’t ignore them today. . . . When was the last time the minority leader read a bill? It was probably an electricity bill.”

I have to agree with Cotton’s assessment of Reid’s effort to resist the defense bill.

Reid, who’s retiring from the Senate at the end of the year, at times has not distinguished himself while leading the Senate’s Democratic caucus. Although the junior senator from Arkansas’s tone was overly harsh — in my humble view — he does hit the bulls-eye in calling out the hypocrisy he finds in the minority leader’s leadership.

Sen. Cotton surely won’t aim his fire with nearly the precision he needs at those within his own caucus. I’m also quite certain his opponents on the other side of the Senate chamber will provide adequate response.

 

national news, political news

‘Low energy’ Jeb to back Trump

Jeb Bush

This is hilarious.

Donald J. Trump eviscerated a field of 16 fellow Republican presidential contenders with insults and counterattacks.

Remember when he called Jeb Bush a “low energy” candidate? It was a devastating attack on the former Florida governor who once was considered to be the man to beat for he 2016 GOP presidential nomination.

Bush then dropped out of the race.

Now we have Trump saying that Jeb is going to find a burst of “energy” and will endorse the presumptive presidential nominee.

I need to sort this out.

Trump insults Bush with the “low energy” crack. Trump then says Bush will find some “energy” and endorse him?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/donald-trump-jeb-bush-223582

Jeb Bush will endorse the GOP candidate who levels yet another veiled insult?

I do not think that will happen.

 

national news, political news

‘Damn e-mails’ return to center stage

3 Comments

mails

Back in the old days, when Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton actually were treating each other nicely, Sanders offered this often-quoted quip: “I am tired of hearing about your damn e-mails.”

I’ve got bad news for you, Sen. Sanders. We’re going to hear about those “damn e-mails” for a while longer.

The State Department’s inspector general has issued a report that says then-Secretary of State Clinton flouted department policy in her use of a personal e-mail server when communicating about State Department issues.

Does this doom Clinton’s assured nomination as the next Democratic Party presidential nominee? No. It’s going to damage her. Why? Republicans will make sure of it.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/281192-watchdog-agency-hits-clinton-top-aides-on-records-policy

I am not giving this report the short shrift. I get the concern about policy violations. What’s unclear to me, though, is whether any of the information Clinton passed on her personal server ever was captured by our nation’s enemies? Did any of them ever use that information to harm our national security?

What’s more, as Clinton has said in pushing back, other secretaries of state have used personal e-mail accounts. Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright? They did, too.

Did they ever compromise national security? I haven’t heard evidence of it regarding those officials, either.

http://thehill.com/regulation/national-security/281220-clinton-campaign-insists-email-setup-not-unique

I was troubled when word came out about the use of personal e-mail servers to convey public information. My major concern then was whether information actually compromised our national security. All the congressional inquiries and probes haven’t yet made that determination.

However, that won’t stop the chatter and the intense criticism. It goes with the political territory.

Bernie Sanders’ wish won’t come true any time soon.

 

national news, political news

Targeting a female, Hispanic governor?

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You’ve got to hand it to Donald J. Trump.

The man has zero filter. His political antennae have been blown over.

Get a load of this.

HeĀ traveledĀ to Albuquerque, the largest city — by far — in New Mexico and then for no obvious or apparent reason he launches into a rhetorical riff against Gov. Susana Martinez.

What makes this so, um, remarkable is that Trump’s comments seemed gratuitous. They had no foundation, nor did they contribute to whatever point he was trying to make.

He was talking about the increase in food stamps in New Mexico for the past dozen or so years. Then he dragged Martinez’s name into his remarks. The governor “has to do better,” he said.

OK, here’s another remarkable element.

New Mexico Governor Gov. Susana Martinez speaks to the delegation at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, Wednesday, August 29, 2012. (Harry E. Walker/MCT via Getty Images)

Trump is having trouble with two key voting blocs. He is looked at unfavorably among women and, uh, Hispanics. He’ll need both of those groups’ support if he has a prayer of being elected president of the United States.

Susana Martinez embodies both of them. All at once. At the same time.

She’s also a rising Republican Party star who, incidentally, had endorsed Marco Rubio in the GOP presidential primary campaign. She didn’t attend the rally at the Albuquerque assembly hall.

My hunch is that her star has risen a good bit higher in the wake of Trump’s ridiculous criticism.

International news, military news

No ‘eye for an eye’ exchange here

mullah

I got scolded the other day for a blog I posted commenting on the drone strike that killed Taliban leader Mullah Mansour.

The fellow who scolded me said the U.S. air strike against the terrorist leader gives cause to continue the fighting.

Someone has to stop it, the individual seemed to imply. Thus, the implied question was: Why not us?

Many of those who read High Plains Blogger — and I am grateful beyond measure for those who do — likely think of me as a squishy liberal, a softy who wants to talk everything through.

When it comes to our war against international terror, I take a back seat to no one in the continuing prosecution of that effort. No, I don’t want us to send combat troops back onto the battlefield. I fully support the air strikes we’ve been launching against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

My critic wondered whether we were engaging in an “eye-for-an-eye” type of response.

My view simply is this: The terrorists are targeting innocent victims, mostly fellow Muslims; we are killing the killers.

I see zero compatibility between what the terrorists are doing and what we are doing in response.

Keep the aircraft armed and on the hunt for the bad guys. We’ve got a lot more of them to kill.

 

national news, political news

Let ‘tradition’ stand regarding tax returns

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Call me a traditionalist.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, wants Congress to enact legislation that requires presidential candidates to release their tax returns for public inspection.

With all due respect to my home boy, I think the bill is an overreach.

Wyden is responding to presumptive Republican presidential frontrunner Donald J. Trump’s refusal to release his returns. Trump contends his returns are under audit by the Internal Revenue Service, to which the IRS has responded “so what?”; an audit doesn’t preclude the release of the returns.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/281194-dem-senator-offers-bill-to-require-candidates-to-release-tax-returns

The tradition has been for presidential candidates to release their returns. They’ve been doing it since 1976, the first election after the Watergate constitutional crisis that forced President Nixon to resign.

My own sense is that tradition ought to stand.

I believe candidates’ refusal to release those returns give voters a key gauge of their character. It gives voters a chance to determine a candidate’s trustworthiness. It enables voters to use such refusal as a measuring stick as to whether the candidate deserves their ballot-box endorsement.

To be sure, Wyden has a dog in this fight. He has endorsed Democratic frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in turn has been blasting Trump to smithereens over his refusal to release his tax returns.

I get Sen. Wyden’s bias.

I also believe “tradition” ought to stand as a de facto rule. Let the presidential candidates decide whether to comply … and thenĀ let voters decide on the correctness of their refusal.

 

 

education news, political news, State news

SBOE runoff turns out OK after all

texas_board_of_education_messes_with_history-460x307

Just about the time I was ready to give up all hope of political sanity within the Texas Republican Party …

Those voters over yonder in the Piney Woods do something sensible. Who’d a thunk it?

Tuesday night, they rejected the candidacy of one Mary Lou Bruner to District 9 on the State Board of Education. Yep, the GOP runoff produced another winner, Keven Ellis of Lufkin, a member of the Lufkin school board.

Bruner had been favored to win. She finished first in the Republican primary in March and was considered a strong candidate in the runoff. Then came the torrent of criticism regarding many of the former kindergarten teacher’s social media posts.

The one that got the most attention has been her contention that President Obama subsidized his drug habit as a young college student by prostituting himself. My favorite, though, was the notion she posted about dinosaurs becoming extinct because the baby T-Rexes couldn’t survive after Noah’s Ark made landfall on Mount Ararat.

District 9 Republicans then began to give serious thought to the choices they had. Did they really want someone with that kind of outlook representing them on the board that determines public education policy in Texas?

I’m still not crazy about the notion of electing these board members. I still prefer that they be appointed, subjected to Texas Senate confirmation, and that they have a deep background in education.

AĀ Republican runoff in one East Texas SBOE district shouldn’t be seen necessarily as a harbinger of a return to sanity in the state’s political process. The state GOP, which dominates the Texas political landscape to the point that it hasĀ all but eradicated Democrats’ viability, still is capable of enacting some highly restrictive public policies.

Still, Keven Ellis’s runoff victory in East Texas gives me some hope that reason and sanity still have a voice within the state Republican Party.