Tag Archives: Christmas

national news

Trump seeks ‘deeper undertanding and respect’? Wow!

Donald Trump issued a Christmas statement in which he did something truly remarkable.

The man who bullies incessantly, who hurls epithets, insults and innuendo indiscriminately has called for a greater emphasis on understanding and respect.

To which I say: Holy moly, man!

Trump wrote:

“While the challenges that face our country are great, the bonds that unite us as Americans are much stronger. Together, we must strive to foster a culture of deeper understanding and respect — traits that exemplify the teachings of Christ.”

Of course he is right. However, that it would come from someone whose tenure in the only public office he ever sought has been marked by incivility, disrespect and an abject lack of understanding is startling to the max.

Oh, my.

national news

Merry Christmas, Mr. President

I had thought about going easy today on Donald J. Trump, given that it’s Christmas and all of that. I am having fun today with my family gathered around. We’re set to have a lot of laughs and good cheer.

Then the president opened his mouth about Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, impeachment and how much his foes hate him. He said that after he spoke from Mar-a-Lago, Fla., to troops stationed overseas, in harm’s way, fighting to protect us against the evil forces that threaten us and the rest of the world.

OK, I won’t wade too deeply into the weeds with this post. I’ll continue to go easier on Donald Trump than I otherwise might be inclined to do.

I just wish the president could set all that partisan bickering nonsense aside for a day. He can’t do it.

I realize I have allowed myself to get sucked into that nastiness sausage grinder on occasion, even during holy holidays.

I’ll just leave it at that.

Today is a joyful day. I intend to keep a smile on my face all day. I might even keep smiling when the sun comes up in the morning.

Merry Christmas, everyone … and to you as well, Mr. President.

local news

Christmas tinged with a touch of apprehension, but a lot of joy

We will awaken in a few hours to yet another Christmas. We won’t have snow on the ground here in North Texas; indeed, the weather forecasters are telling us we’ll have a warm Christmas this year.

That’s all right with me.

Our family is here. We will enjoy seeing them all. We’ll have plenty of laughs. We’ll unwrap some gifts. We’ll express gratitude in some fashion through the day for the reason we celebrate this particular holiday. It’s a holy time as well as a festive time. We’ll mix it all up into a hodge-podge celebration.

It also will deliver us partially from the tension that is building within the halls of power within our federal government. There is no total escape from what is transpiring in Washington, D.C., and at this moment in the states and congressional districts where our elected representatives have fanned out to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah with their friends and loved ones.

They’re likely to get a gut full from their constituents before they return to work. That’s why we pay ’em the big bucks. It’s a big part of why they rake in 175 grand each year. We pay them to listen to our complaints.

And, yes … presidential impeachment is on many of our minds. Even now. Even while we celebrate holy holiday. Even while we should divorce ourselves from the tribulations that are bedeviling our government and the officials we elect to run it on our behalf.

As for my family and me, we’re going to kick back, chill out, enjoy the holiday, enjoy each other, get hugs from our granddaughter and laugh out loud at what we’re all going to say.

The rest of it will be waiting for us when the season passes. At this moment, late in the day prior to Christmas, I won’t be in any rush to let this joyful time pass.

religious news

Evangelical movement showing signs of splintering

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

If the soon-to-be-former editor in chief of Christianity Today has accomplished anything with his scathing critique of Donald J. Trump, it is that he has revealed deep divisions within the evangelical movement and its love-loathe relationship with the president of the United States.

Mark Galli wrote an editorial condemning Trump, calling for his removal from office on the grounds that he is “profoundly immoral.” Galli, who is retiring soon from his post, calls the impeachment of Trump a deal-breaker, saying that the articles of impeachment suggest a president with no moral character.

Other evangelical leaders have rushed to Trump’s defense. One of them is Franklin Graham, the son of Christianity Today’s founder, the late Billy Graham. Others have joined in as well, condemning Galli for challenging Trump, who many say has done more for the issues friendly to evangelicals than any president in modern history.

The evangelical Christian movement, therefore, is having a serious debate within its ranks that, as I see it, mirrors what is occurring across the nation along more secular/political lines.

This is a healthy development within a key Trump constituency.

I credit Mark Galli for breaking this matter open, for exposing the divide for the rest of us to witness in real time.

And yes, there is a certain irony that this debate is occurring at this holy time, as Christians around the world celebrate Jesus Christ’s birth. It might be that was Galli’s intent all along, to publish the editorial, to provoke this discussion at this time of the year.

If that’s the case, then all I can add is this: well played, sir.

I want to share the editorial with you one more time. Take a look.

Merry Christmas.

local news

The perfect antidote to all the craziness

I have discovered the perfect antidote — the remedy, if you will — to take one’s mind off the bizarre antics of those in power in Washington, D.C.

It is to take your granddaughter to a Christmas tree lighting in the community where you live — and then to watch your little pride and joy get asked to throw some fairy dust on the tree when Santa Claus arrives from the North Pole.

That’s what we did tonight. Emma had a blast. Grandma had more fun than she can stand, too. So … did I.

We drove the short distance to Veterans Memorial Park in downtown Princeton, Texas, a bit early. The activities began at 4 p.m.; we got there around 5. They wouldn’t light the three until 7:15. We had plenty of time to, um, waste.

We did. We walked around, visited with parents and grandparents of little ones enjoying the spirit of the season. Emma got to strap on some ice skates and “skate” her way around a rink that comprised a sort of plastic material that was interlocked like a puzzle. She only fell once, but got up and was just fine.

The sun set beautifully. Then a young woman who said she works for the city approached Emma and asked her if she wanted to throw some fairy dust on the tree when it the time arrived for the lighting. Emma, quite naturally, agreed. We called her Mommy and Daddy and she told them what she was about to do.

Then came the time. Santa arrived aboard a Princeton Fire Department truck, accompanied by an elf. Mayor John-Mark Caldwell wished us all a Merry Christmas and counted down. When he got to zero, Emma and four little acquaintances who also got recruited tossed the fairy dust on the tree. It lit up spectacularly. We all cheered.

Emma could not have been happier. Neither could her grandparents.

It was a moment of unfettered joy. It took my mind off the more serious matters about which I have been commenting on in this blog. I’ll get back to that in due course.

Tonight, though, I am filled with a child’s joy at welcoming Santa Claus to our community.

I will sleep well tonight.

national news

Newt offers a stunning demonstration of duplicity

Newt Gingrich’s lack of self-awareness is utterly and totally astonishing.

The former Republican U.S. House speaker told Fox News this week that he is amazed and stunned that congressional Democrats would have the nerve to impeach Donald Trump this close to Christmas.

Why, that is just appalling, he said. How can Democrats possibly sully this holy event with such a display of blatant partisanship?

Well, let’s flash back 21 years, shall we?

The GOP-led House of Representatives, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, received articles of impeachment from the Judiciary Committee in its effort to impeach President Bill Clinton. When did the full House vote on those articles and formally impeach the president?

They did it on the week of Christmas, 1998! The date was Dec. 19.

So, my demand of the former speaker today is clear and concise.

Shut … up!

local news

Awaiting holiday season in new surroundings

It’s one thing to move to a new community, a new home and becoming acquainted with new surroundings during most of the year.

It’s another thing altogether when you welcome the Christmas holiday amid all that newness. Why, even Toby the puppy — as you can see in the photo — is wearing some new Christmas threads.

So a new holiday awaits my wife and me — along with the Puppy — in our new digs in Collin County. We spent 23 or so Christmas seasons ensconced in our home in southwest Amarillo. We grew comfortable in that home, which we had built in the fall and early winter of 1996.

Indeed, our first Christmas in that home was one for the ages. We closed on the house on Dec. 22, 1996, took possession of the place, then had most of our worldly possessions hauled out of storage where it had laid dormant for nearly two years.

We spent Christmas opening up boxes and getting reacquainted with pictures, furniture, doo-dads, knickknacks and assorted gadgets and gizmos we had locked away.

Our Christmas tree that year was a potted Norfolk pine we brought with us from Beaumont. We strung a few lights around it, tossed a little tinsel on it and surrounded it with gift packages.

We moved from Randall County to Collin County in the spring of 2018. Then earlier this year we decided to look for a house to purchase. We found one in Princeton, closed the deal and moved in. That all took place in late February.

Now our first Christmas in our latest new home is coming up fast. It won’t have quite the same element of rediscovery as the holiday I described earlier. However, it will be memorable nonetheless. Of that I am certain.

My biggest challenge now rests with trying to decide how to string lights around our new house. Wish me luck.

military news

If only Trump were ‘good’ at lying; he isn’t

Donald Trump is setting some sort of unofficial record for lying, prevarication, misstatements muttered, uttered and sputtered from the White House.

One of his more recent, um, lies takes the cake.

The commander in chief stood before troops in Iraq the day after Christmas. He went to the war zone with his wife, Melania, and told the men and women assembled before him that they had just gotten the first pay raise in 10 years. Lie!

Then he said he fought for a 10-percent pay increase, even though others wanted to grant them a considerably smaller pay raise. Lie!

Our fighting personnel have gotten raises every year for more than three decades. As for the 10-percent raise this year, it didn’t happen. Their raise is considerably smaller than what the president described to them.

Here is what troubles me greatly: Donald Trump’s incessant barrage of falsehoods seems pointless, needless, foundationless. It is gratuitous. He lies when he doesn’t need to lie.

The Washington Post has been keeping track of the president’s lying/prevarication/misspeaking. The newspaper’s total now is past 7,500 such statements — and this is before the end of the first half of the president’s term! His lying is accelerating as well!

I should be more circumspect in calling these statements outright “lies.” To lie is to say something knowing it is false. Some critics have suggested that Trump simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about; therefore, he doesn’t necessarily purposely lie to our faces.

However, Donald Trump has told us repeatedly that he possesses a level of intelligence that few men have ever had. He knows the “best words.” He went to the “best schools.” He got the “best education.” He surrounds himself with the “best people.” Doesn’t all of that suggest to you — as it does to me — that the president should know of which he speaks when he opens his mouth?

The president is a liar. Now he’s gone before the men and women he purports to “love” and revere — our warriors in harm’s way — and lied to their faces!

Amazing.

national news

Trump shows smallness with Christmas greeting

Presidents of the United States routinely offer Christmas or other holiday greetings with an ample measure of good cheer and happiness. They wish us well, perhaps inject a little faith into their greetings. We feel good hearing from our head of state.

What did Donald J. Trump do today? He fired off a Twitter message that talks of the “disgrace” that infects our political world . . . but then offered a Merry Christmas greeting. It looked for all the world like a throwaway line.

He said: “It’s a disgrace, what’s happening in this country. But other than that I wish everyone a very merry Christmas.” Warm and fuzzy, yes?

I want to suggest that the tone and tenor of the president’s message today reflected a smallness, a bitterness and a pettiness in the man who holds the nation’s highest office, who commands the world’s greatest military and who (supposedly) represents the world’s most indispensable nation.

I wish he could have just — for once! — followed the norm set by all his predecessors. He could have simply offered his fellow Americans a heartfelt holiday wish and saved the political malarkey for another day; I’d even settle for him returning to the fight the day after Christmas.

He didn’t do that. He invoked the fight that has shut down part of the federal government. He suggested the “disgrace” is augmented by his fight with members of Congress over construction of The Wall he wants to erect along our southern border.

Oh, and then he tweeted this message on Christmas Eve: I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security. At some point the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our Country more money than the Border Wall we are all talking about. Crazy!

The more he claims to be a big man, the more he sounds like a small man. The larger the boast, the smaller he becomes.

Donald Trump is one strange dude.

national news

Merry Christmas to you, too, Mr. POTUS

Donald Trump sort of offered a mixed Christmas wish to his fellow Americans.

He wrote: “It’s a disgrace, what’s happening in this country, but other than that I wish every a very merry Christmas.”

Geez, thanks, Mr. President.

His greeting kind of reminds me of how someone might have greeted Mary Todd Lincoln: “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

The “disgrace” Trump referenced is the border wall standoff and the partial shutdown of the federal government. I get that it’s a disgrace what is happening, except that he’s a principal party to it occurring in the first place. He insists on $5 billion for a wall that stands as a waste of money that the government doesn’t have; we are in debt up to our armpits, after all, right?

Trump once promised/pledged/committed to forcing Mexico to pay for the wall on our southern border. It ain’t happening. That means you and I could be stuck with the tab.

Still, the president’s Christmas greeting offers the faintest of good wishes.

I’ll accept the “Merry Christmas” part of it with some reluctance. The “disgrace” element? Well, that’s on the president as much — if not more so — as it is on everyone else in government.