Is it time to look ahead to city election? Sure, let’s do it!

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The presidential election has been decided … to the satisfaction of a minority of Americans who voted for the winner.

I won’t get into the ongoing discussion about the Electoral College.

Instead, let’s take a brief look at our own next election cycle, right here in Amarillo.

We’re going to elect our City Council next May. Our city charter puts all five seats up for election at the same time. We get to keep ’em all, toss ’em all out or decide on some variation in between.

The May 2015 election produced a pretty radical shakeup on the council. Voters elected three new guys: Randy Burkett, Mark Nair and Elisha Demerson. Voters re-elected two others, Mayor Paul Harpole and Brian Eades; then Eades quit and moved to Colorado and he’s been succeeded by Lisa Blake, who emerged as the frontrunner after a highly public interview process with four other finalists selected by the council.

To say we’ve had a rough time of it at City Hall since the May 2015 election would be the height (or depth) of understatement.

City Manager Jarrett Atkinson quit, along with a number of other senior city administrators.  Then the council hired Terry Childers as the interim city manager. That didn’t turn out too well, as Childers this past week quit his job one year to the day after being named the interim manager.

Childers messed up one time too many.

Now the council has to get busy and find someone who wants to take hold of the city’s administrative reins. This is the only hire the council makes directly. It whiffed with Childers. Are these folks capable of filling this critical job? We shall see.

The council has gotten involved in some disputes among its members. The mayor has been at odds openly with the three new fellows, and they have been with him. All this has occurred as the city has embarked on a major makeover of its downtown district. Holy cow, dudes!

So, the question of the moment is this: Will the three new council members face a serious challenge from someone — or from an organized group of residents — if and/or when they seek re-election?

They all promised “change” when they were elected to the council. They certainly have delivered on their promise. Collegiality has given way to chaos. Decorum has been replaced by dysfunction.

The issue that awaits voters, though, is whether the change has been worth the tumult that has boiled over at City Hall.

We’ll find out in due time.

Castro created an unintended legacy

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The late Fidel Castro wanted to create a legacy in his island nation of Cuba.

He led what he called a “revolution” in the late 1950s. Castro promised to bring democracy to Cuba. He brought instead a reign of repression and terror.

In the process, though, El Comandante created another legacy. He helped form a lasting political movement in the United States of America. When thousands of Cubans wised up to the misery that was coming to their nation, they fled Cuba for the U.S. of A.

Most of them settled initially in south Florida. The Cuban expatriates then coalesced into a formidable political bloc. They were — and remain — fervently anti-communist to the core.

Their numbers continued to grow through the early and mid-1960s as more Cubans fled the island. Their families expanded in this country. The expats then taught their children and, later, their grandchildren about the hideous rule that Castro had brought to their homeland.

They became involved in U.S. politics. They got elected to high public office. A couple of Cuban descendants — U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas — sought the Republican Party presidential nomination.

Indeed, the bulk of the Cuban-American political community leans heavily to toward the GOP. Their influence has helped inform Republican Party policy toward Cuba for nearly six decades.

This bloc of voters also fought successfully — until recently — against efforts to restore diplomatic and economic relations between the United States and Cuba.

The Cuban commies who mourn Castro’s death likely won’t bring up this part of the tyrant’s legacy. I have just done so here.

Pollsters need a careful revamping of their methods

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If it sounds a bit familiar that public opinion pollsters are going back to the drawing boards after missing the call of the 2016 presidential election …

It’s because you’ve heard it before.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/307111-pollsters-go-back-to-drawing-board

Virtually ever “reputable” poll had Hillary Rodham Clinton winning the presidency on Nov. 8. Some had her winning by a fairly comfortable margin. She, of course, didn’t. Donald J. Trump is now preparing to become the next president.

Why is this familiar?

I recall the 2004 election in which President Bush won a second term over Sen. John F. Kerry. The sticking point that year was in Ohio, where exit pollsters had Kerry carrying the Buckeye State. Then the votes started pouring in. Bush won Ohio. He was re-elected. Kerry and his team were stunned. They thought they had Ohio in the bag. Had they won, they would have had just enough electoral votes to defeat the president.

Those dismal exit poll results, along with other misfires around the nation, signaled the end of Voter News Service, the outfit that coordinated all the polling and vote tabulation around the country.

The screw-ups this time were much more severe. Even the once-highly regarded FiveThirtyEight.com poll done by Nate Silver missed by a mile. Silver’s analysis had Clinton with a 71 percent chance of winning on he eve of the election.

Of course, many of the pollsters are trying to cover their backsides. They say they predicted Clinton’s national popular vote percentage, more or less. They missed, though, in several key battleground states where Trump won: Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida — all states won by Barack Obama in 2008, who won all of them again except for North Carolina in 2012.

Polling has come a long way since the infamous “Dewey beats Truman” headline of 1948. However, as we witnessed during this election season, it still has some distance yet to travel.

Recount effort is far from a ‘scam’

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My feelings about an effort to recount the votes in Wisconsin are evolving … but only a little.

I am not overly suspicious of the balloting that took place in Wisconsin that granted the state’s electoral votes to Donald J. Trump. Yet, Jill Stein — the Green Party presidential candidate — says there is sufficient reason to doubt the integrity of the system. She has gotten the state to agree to a recount.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has joined in. She wants to ensure the votes are tabulated accurately and the system is audited properly.

Trump’s view? He calls it a “scam.”

OK, Mr. President-elect. You’ve bitched and griped during the entire campaign about it being “rigged” against you. Why not, then, line up behind this effort to ensure that the ballots were counted properly?

Trump was elected president. A recount isn’t likely to produce any shocking surprises … at least nothing as shocking as Trump winning Wisconsin’s electoral votes in the first place.

If the winner felt compelled to accuse state and local election officials of seeking to rob him of victory, then he ought to stand squarely behind Stein’s effort to ensure that it was all above board.

While I disagree with Dr. Stein’s effort, I don’t see it as a “scam.” Neither should the president-elect.

Don’t go to Castro’s funeral, Mr. President

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I won’t spend a lot of time and space making my point here, so I’ll get right to it.

President Obama shouldn’t attend Fidel Castro’s funeral in Cuba. Stay away, Mr. President. Now I’ll offer a brief explainer as to why.

When the president announced plans to normalize relations with Cuba, he did so apparently over Fidel’s expressed displeasure.

In fact, when the president visited Cuba in 2015, the then-former Cuban strongman didn’t see the president. Instead, he issued a statement that was quite critical of the effort to end the economic embargo the United States slapped on Cuba shortly after Castro seized power in 1959.

I get that the president wants to express sympathy to Castro’s family. Fine. Send them a letter. Place a private phone call.

El Comandante wasn’t too keen on improving U.S.-Cuba relations. He had his reasons, I suppose. Whatever they were, they don’t matter any longer.

Just stay home, Mr. President. Send an emissary. Maybe two or three of them. Our head of state, though, need not take part in the commemorating the death of a despot.

Good riddance, El Comandante

FILE - In this July 11, 2014 file photo, Cuba's Fidel Castro speaks during a meeting with Russia's President Vladimir Putin, in Havana, Cuba. Social media around the world have been flooded with rumors of Castro's death, but there was no sign Friday, Jan. 9, 2015, that the reports were true, even if the 88-year-old former Cuban leader has not been seen in public for months. (AP Photo/Alex Castro, File)

It’s been said of prominent world leaders that single acts result in what would be written about them in their obituary.

For Fidel Castro, such an act that no doubt will appear in obits around the world must read, “… who took the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation.”

The Cuban dictator is dead at the age of 90. He outlasted 10 American presidents in one of the more peculiar political standoffs of the past century.

But it was a two-week span in October 1962 that remains the lynchpin of Castro’s reign of the island nation that sits just off the tip of Florida. He allowed Soviet engineers to build missile launch platforms in Cuba capable of sending nuclear-armed missiles against the United States or anyone else in the hemisphere. U.S. spy planes spotted the installations; President Kennedy got wind of them. The president then went nose-to-nose with Castro and his Soviet benefactors.

The Cuban missile crisis ended when the other side “blinked” after Kennedy ordered a complete naval blockade of the island and he did that after advising the nation in a televised address that any strike from Cuba against any nation in the hemisphere would be met by the full force of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Castro led a “revolution” in 1959 that overthrew a hideous dictator. Cubans thought they were being liberated from repression. They were mistaken. Castro’s repression was every bit as severe. His fellow Cubans suffered economic deprivation, loss of human rights and dignity, imprisonment, loss of liberty across the board.

Despite all that, the continued economic sanctions imposed by the United States stopped making sense a long time ago, especially after the Soviet Union evaporated in 1991. The Cubans themselves never did pose much of an economic or military threat to this nation.

President Obama finally moved to end the embargo and restored a semblance of normal relations Cuba.

Still, Fidel Castro’s legacy will not be a glowing one.

Obama’s remarks in response to Castro’s death were appropriately neutral. As the Washington Post reported: “We know that this moment fills Cubans — in Cuba and in the United States — with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation,” Obama said in a statement. “History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.”

Enormous impact? Powerful emotions? Singular figure? Yes to all of that. Indeed, in the Little Havana area of Miami, they’re celebrating Castro’s death. I certainly would call that a “powerful emotion.”

So it is that this individual finally has departed the scene.

My feelings are a bit mixed. I am glad the United States has lifted its economic sanctions against Cuba. Still, the world is better off without Fidel Castro.

So long, El Comandante.

Open your eyes to threats to Obama

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Michelle Malkin is one of the nation’s more fiery conservative columnists.

I don’t care for her world view, but I’ll read her essays every so often just to hyperventilate a little, oxygenate my bloodstream; it’s good for my physical health.

Today, the Amarillo Globe-News published a little ditty from Malkin that deserves a brief rejoinder. She writes about what she calls the “assassination fascination” since the election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.

Malkin talks about how all those meanies on the left keep saying they want to kill Trump. They’re echoing earlier meanies who said the same thing about President George W. Bush.

The only mention I could find in the column of President Obama came in a sentence in which Malkin asks why the president is silent on these idiotic pronouncement from aggrieved lefties.

http://michellemalkin.com/2016/11/22/from-kill-bush-to-assassinatetrump-the-return-of-assassination-fascination/

I’ll accept that as a good point. The president ought to condemn such talk.

However, let’s take stock of something else.

Nowhere in Malkin’s screed does she mention that Barack Obama received arguably a record number of threats against his life during his eight years in the White House. There were assassination threats being leveled constantly at the president. The Secret Service has been working diligently to examine all these threats against the current president.

Therefore, this “assassination fascination” isn’t a one-party monopoly.

I agree that such threat-making is dangerous and uncalled for. The lefties who say such things need to get a grip, take stock and understand the consequences of what they’re saying.

A columnist who launches into a partisan polemic, though, needs to understand as well that there’s plenty of guilt and blame that belongs to her side of this argument.

Why didn’t she condemn the Barack Obama haters for their equally shameful pronouncements? Oh, I know. It doesn’t fit her right-wing narrative.

Words ‘I am retired’ flowing more easily

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This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.

You might not think this is a big deal, but it is to me.

The words “I am retired” are flowing more easily out of my pie hole these days.

I get asked frequently by customers at the auto dealership where I work: “Do you do this full time, part time or what? Are you retired?”

My answer: “Oh I’m retired now.”

Actually, my presence at the auto dealership reveals that I am not yet fully retired. I’m getting there, slowly but inexorably.

I’ll admit to being a bit uncomfortable saying “I am retired” when I first started collecting my Social Security income. My discomfort wasn’t anything that I can identify. I didn’t have pangs in my gut. I didn’t stutter when I said it. I didn’t flinch, wince or grimace at the sound of the words.

It was just a strange set of words coming from me, of all people, a guy who had worked pretty damn hard for nearly 40 years in daily journalism. Then it ended. I was sent out to pasture, along with a number of other, um, more mature fellow practitioners of this noble craft.

I have admitted already that I wasn’t ready for the day I tendered my resignation after being told someone else would be doing the job I had been doing at my last newspaper stop here in Amarillo. Instead of seeking another job at the Globe-News, I decided to quit.

Boom, just like that, my career was over.

The onset of retirement is sounding more comfortable to me these days. I’ve still got a couple of part-time jobs that keep me busy. There’s the Street Toyota auto dealership customer service gig; there’s also my freelance writing gig at KFDA NewsChannel 10.

However, I am feeling more retired these days than not.

What’s more, I am quite comfortable saying it out loud.

Ain’t it cool?

Stein wants to recount ballots … to what end?

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Jill Stein is so indignant at the voting process in Wisconsin she wants them to recount the ballots.

The Green Party presidential candidate isn’t doing this for herself. She finished fourth in the balloting there. No, she is doing it apparently on behalf of Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost the state to Donald Trump by about 25,000 votes.

Here’s the problem with Stein’s quest, as I see it: Clinton ain’t on board, at least not publicly.

Stein managed to raise about $5 million to pay for the recount. She figures there’s sufficient irregularities in the process that it could turn the state toward Clinton. Flipping Wisconsin’s electoral votes, a highly unlikely event, won’t reverse the election.

This is exercise isn’t going to change the outcome.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/jill-stein-formally-files-for-wisconsin-recount-as-fundraising-effort-passes-dollar5m/ar-AAkKPWV?li=BBnb7Kz

Please — please! — do not misconstrue my own feelings here. I wish there was ample evidence of vote-tampering and “hacking,” as Stein has alleged. There isn’t. I also wish the outcome had turned out differently. It didn’t.

We’ve got Donald Trump getting ready to become the next president of the United States. Heaven help us.

As for Stein’s quest to reverse one state’s result — which, if successful, could produce recounts in at least two other battleground states, she is mounting the mother of futile challenges.

It strikes me as odd that she is proceeding without any public show of support from the candidate who continues to roll up a significant popular vote margin over the “winner.”

Why is that? My strong hunch is that Hillary knows as well that it’s a futile endeavor. As Stein herself as acknowledged, she has no “smoking gun.”

So … what’s the point?

Mitt emerges as State contender; Trumpkins are furious

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Mitt Romney’s emergence as a top contender for secretary of state in the Trump administration makes me chuckle.

I might even laugh out loud if Mitt actually gets the call from the president-elect.

Mitt said some pretty harsh things about Donald J. Trump during the election. He called him a “fraud,” a “phony”; he questioned whether Trump was hiding criminal activity by refusing to release his tax returns; he said Trump University demonstrated Trump’s lack of real business acumen.

Now the 2012 Republican presidential nominee is being vetted for the top job a State.

Trumpkins are upset about it. They don’t want this man speaking for the president on foreign policy. They distrust him.

If the 2012 GOP nominee hadn’t said those things about the 2016 nominee, then I would be all for Mitt joining the Trump team. You see, given Trump’s absolute absence of any government experience — at any level — someone such as Mitt could be seen as a leavening influence. After all, he did serve one term as governor of Massachusetts. What’s more, Mitt has considerable exposure to foreign heads of government. Isn’t he a BFF with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu?

A part of me understands the angst that’s boiling up within the ranks of true-blue Trumpkins.

Mitt could be an asset to the Trump team. Except that he did deliver that blistering — and in my view accurate — critique of the president-elect during the campaign.

Which version of Mitt would Trump hire if he chose him to run the State Department?