Category Archives: political news

business news, national news, political news

How about sharing the credit?

1 Comment

Grover Norquist just cracks me up.

The anti-tax Republican activist wants the GOP to seize the credit for the nation’s economic recovery from those pesky Democrats, led by President Barack Obama.

It’s Republican policies, not Democratic policies, that have ignited the nation’s recovery from near-disaster, Norquist told The Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/30/grover-norquist-economy_n_6396682.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

Hey, here’s an idea, Mr. Tax Cutter: How about sharing it?

In a way, Norquist does make a salient point — more or less — about Republicans’ insistence that the economy still stinks. He says they should shut their trap about that and take credit for the good news we’re hearing.

According to The Huffington Post: “‘There were outside voices advising Republicans on what to do. They missed both calls,’ Norquist said in an interview with The Huffington Post. ‘I object as much as some of the guys on the right who are never satisfied in the moment. I’m never satisfied over time. But they go, ‘This was a disaster.’ No it wasn’t. We played our hand as well as you could and better than we had any reason to expect we would be able to.'”

If my own memory remains intact, I do believe the president gave in to Republican demands to keep the tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration. He could have dug in his heels and demanded repeal of the “Bush tax cuts” for business and big income earners, but he didn’t.

As some have noted as well, the oil boom has driven the nation’s economic revival. Nothing else. It’s just oil, they say. Presidential policies have nothing to do with that.

If that’s the case, then do Republican congressional policies play a role here? I’m thinking, well, maybe not.

Whatever the case, the nation’s economic health is far better than it was when Barack Obama took the presidential oath in January 2009. He pushed through a bold stimulus package with the help of a Democratic-controlled Congress. The auto industry bounced back, thanks to that stimulus — and then repaid the federal Treasury in full.

The labor market has been restored to where it was prior to the crash of late 2008.

Who deserves credit? I’ve been glad to give the president some of the credit. I’ll give credit as well to that other co-equal branch of government, Congress.

The only problem with Norquist’s call for less belly-aching and more bragging is that the GOP will have to concede that its Democratic “friends” had a hand in it as well.

Didn’t they?

 

national news, political news

If you can't lick 'em, get rid of 'em

John McCain is getting ready, it seems, for yet another run for re-election to the U.S. Senate from Arizona.

What’s more, he’s launching a pre-emptive strike against the wing of the Republican Party that is likely to challenge him. I’m talking about the TEA party wing of the GOP.

McCain is making an effort to purge the Arizona Republican Party of TEA party activists and replacing them with mainstream Republicans — like himself.

Not that he cares what a Texas liberal thinks, but hey — go, John, go!

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/john-mccain-arizona-tea-party-113849.html?ml=po

As Politico reports: “The ambitious effort — detailed to POLITICO by nearly a dozen McCain operatives, donors, and friends — has stretched from office buildings in Alexandria, Virginia, where strategists plotted and fundraisers collected cash for a super PAC, to Vietnamese-American communities across Arizona, where recruiters sought out supporters eager to help the incumbent defeat the tea party.

“Team McCain’s goal? Unseat conservative activists who hold obscure, but influential, local party offices.”

I believe that’s how you play hardball politics in Arizona.

Arizona political rules are a bit strange, according to Politico. It allows for the election of precinct committee men, who then elect party chairs — who then assume powerful roles in recruiting candidates to seek public office. As of this past August, most of those party chairs and precinct committee folks were considered McCain foes. He’s working now to replace them with friends, allies, loyalists — those who favor his re-election to his umpteenth term in the Senate.

TEA party activists and other Republican conservatives consider McCain to be too moderate. He’s just not tough enough on immigration, for example. They want his head on a platter — so to speak, of course — because he’s just too darn chummy with some Senate Democrats. I would hasten to add that the media love McCain because he’s, well, quite quotable. He makes “good copy,” to use the journalist’s parlance.

Many conservatives consider McCain to be washed up, past his prime, part of the problem. He knows the Senate. He understands the art of legislation.

I hope he’s just getting warmed up.

 

national news, political news

It's still the economy, stupid

On the eve of the new year, let’s take a quick look at how the economy “tanked” during 2014.

What? Oh, you mean it didn’t? Darn! I must have forgotten about that recent Department of Commerce report that showed the Gross Domestic Product grew at an annual rate of 5 percent for the latest quarter.

OK, I guess that means that the Obama economic policies, those frightening elements that would send the U.S. economy into a tailspin just didn’t do what Republican doomsayers said they would.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-economic-facts-get-in-the-way/2014/12/29/c82d7686-8f9c-11e4-a900-9960214d4cd7_story.html

As the columnist Eugene Robinson wonders in the Washington Post, what in the world are GOP presidential candidates going to campaign on in 2016?

Those darn monthly jobs numbers keep piling up at a rate of a couple hundred thousand jobs a month. Oh, the deficit? It’s down … by about half of what it was annually when Barack Obama took office.

Gasoline prices? They’re down too. Now, the president isn’t able to take credit for the rapid decline in fuel prices, but he sure got the blame from the GOP presidential field in 2012 when they were increasing. Do you remember?

And yes, Wall Street seems happy. The Dow Jones Industrial Index is at 18,000, up more than double where it was in January 2009, when that “socialist” Obama took office. As Robinson noted in his column: “This is terrific for Wall Street and the 1 percenters, but it also fattens the pension funds and retirement accounts of the middle class.”

Uh, hello? Count me as one of those “middle class” Americans who’s happy with the status of his retirement account.

“For years, a central tenet of the Republican argument has been that on economic issues, Obama is either incompetent or a socialist,” Robinson writes. “It should have been clear from the beginning that he is neither, given that he rescued an economy on the brink of tipping into depression — and in a way that was friendly to Wall Street’s interests. But the GOP rarely lets the facts get in the way of a good story, so attacks on Obama’s economic stewardship have persisted.

And they’ll really get cranked up right along with the 2016 campaign.

 

national news, political news

Congressman Felon ready to quit

Well now, it turns out that the latest case of congressional corruption is going to end the right way for Americans who actually expect their elected representatives to behave legally and ethically.

Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., who had pleaded guilty to tax fraud, mail fraud and assorted other felonies, is now set to quit his congressional seat.

Good deal. No, it’s a great deal!

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/michael-grimm-resignation-113867.html?hp=l1_3

Grimm is a back-bench member of Congress who once served in the FBI. He campaigned for Congress on a platform of crime-fighting and getting rid of corruption. Then it turns out he’s one of them, one of the bad guys.

And when a reporter had the temerity to question Grimm about the charges hovering over him, the congressman threatened to break the reporter in half and toss him over the railing to the floor of the House of the chamber several dozen feet below. Oh yes: This was captured on video, as the reporter works for a TV station in Grimm’s congressional district.

As Politico reported: “Grimm, a 44-year-old former FBI agent, admitted a week ago to failing to report more than $900,000 in revenue from a Manhattan restaurant, Healthalicious, that he owned from 2007 to 2010.”

Could this man vote on tax policies affecting all Americans — including those who live far from his Staten Island district? Of course not. Good riddance, young man.

 

political news, State news

Let’s not cherry-pick Scripture

Read this editorial carefully. It’s a brief but brilliant lecture on how politicians shouldn’t selectively quote Scripture to make a cheap political point.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/opinions/editorials/article/Gov-Perry-s-view-reflects-poorly-on-all-of-us-5974944.php

The target of this opinion from the Beaumont Enterprise is the lame-duck Texas governor, Rick Perry, who told the Washington Post that Scripture tells us there always will be poor folks. As the Enterprise noted, Perry’s comment to the Post is just another way of saying “What’s the use?” in helping the poor.

The editorial also notes that Jesus possibly was referring to an Old Testament reference that calls on us to reach out and help the poor whenever possible.

Conservatives and liberals alike have this annoying habit of turning to the Holy Word and cherry-picking passages, taking them out context, and turning them into their political ammunition to fire at their adversaries. Conservatives use the Bible to argue against gay rights, abortion rights and whether to teach evolution in public schools. Liberals use the Bible to argue for helping the poor.

I’ve always been leery of those who keep citing Scripture — Old and New Testament alike. It’s always good to examine all of what Jesus told his followers or what the prophets were saying many centuries before Jesus Christ’s birth.

Gov. Perry’s misuse of a biblical statement is just one more example that we must not follow.

 

local news, political news, State news

Panhandle might fall victim to intra-party squabble

Having taken note of the political demise of a soundly conservative lawmaker from East Texas to an even more conservative challenger, the thought occurred to me: Is the Texas Panhandle susceptible to this kind of intra-party insurrection?

State Sen. Bob Deuell is about to leave office after being defeated in the GOP primary by newcomer Bob Hall. As the Dallas Morning News columnist noted, the “farthest right” defeated the “far right.”

So, what does this mean for the Panhandle?

I’ll admit that the GOP primary contest for the Texas Senate seat held by Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, frightened the bejabbers out of me. Seliger almost got beat in the March primary by former Midland mayor Mike Canon, a nice guy who’s also a TEA party mouthpiece. Canon suggested during the campaign that Seliger, a mainstream Republican former Amarillo mayor, was somehow in cahoots with them crazy liberals in Austin.

The Panhandle, indeed all of West Texas, dodged a bullet by re-nominating Seliger in the primary and allowing him to coast to re-election in an uncontested race in November.

What does the future hold? What might occur if, say, state Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, packs it in? Smithee has served in the Legislature since 1985 and has developed a reputation as one of the smartest, most legislatively savvy members of the Texas House.

Who’s lying in wait out there for a key retirement? Who’s waiting in the tall grass waiting to seize the moment to launch a sound-bite campaign the way Hall did against Deuell?

It happened in a Texas Senate district down yonder. It can happen here.

 

political news, State news

'Farthest right' defeats the far right

Bob Deuell might be the face of the changing Texas Republican Party.

He is a soon-to-be former state senator from East Texas. Deuell got beat by someone described by Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow who is “a virtual newcomer to Texas and politics.” The man who’s about to represent the east Dallas legislative district did it be “branding Deuell a liberal,” according to Blow.

What little I know about Deuell, a family physician, he is anything but the liberal that Sen..-elect Bob Hall described in his successful campaign.

Therein might get right to the core of what’s happened to the Texas Republican Party. It has become something that mainstream, establishment conservatives — such as Bob Deuell — no longer recognize.

“To call me a liberal? It’s just ridiculous,” Deuell told Blow, who described the lawmaker as “my senator.” Blow said he had a “front-row seat on this crazy battle between the far and farthest right.”

Blow said he laughed when he received “mailers at home with freaky colorized photos of Deuell and Barack Obama pasted together. ‘Stop Bob Deuell’s liberal agenda,’ they said,” Blow writes.

How did this novice defeat a reliably conservative 12-year veteran of the Texas Senate? Blow said “Hall’s TEA party base was simply more energized and engaged.”

Bingo!

According to Blow, Hall managed to cobble together a campaign of lies about Deuell’s support for needle exchanges for drug addicts. Deuell bucked his Republican colleagues in supporting the exchanges because of “clear medical evidence” that the exchanges decrease incidents of hepatitis and HIVA. “And 20 percent of the addicts who participated got into rehab programs. To me, it’s the fiscally conservative thing to do.”

Blow rights that Deuell couldn’t get other legislators to support the exchanges out of fear they would be “sound-bited on the issue.”

“Predictably,” Blow writes, “Hall did exactly that against Deuell, characterizing it as ‘free needles for drug addicts.'”

Deuell predicts a long and arduous legislative session.

After all, the state Senate will be led by a lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who’s an expert at demagoguery and glib sound bites.

Welcome to the new Texas Republican Party.

national news, political news

Obama getting year-end poll bounce

What’s going on here? President Obama is getting a bump in the polls as the year ends.

How can this be? We keep reading about “plummeting” poll numbers. Republicans kept harping on that as they ran hard against Democratic incumbents in the mid-term election. The strategy worked. The GOP gained control of the U.S. Senate, strengthened its hold on the House and snatched away a couple more governors seats for good measure.

Well, it seems that Americans might be willing to give the president a final chance as he enters the last two years in the White House.

With Republicans now running all of one branch of government — not just half of it — they’ll need to produce some actual results rather than seeking to block everything Democrats, including Barack Obama, want to do.

The Real Clear Politics average of polls puts the president’s approval rating at 42.6 percent, which still isn’t great. But the margin between approval and disapproval is now less than 10 percent, which is another interesting indicator of what the public thinks about Obama’s standing.

I’m hoping for the best the next two years.

Split government isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The president will have to compromise — some more! — on some issues. As for Republicans, they too will need to show more of a willingness to bend a little. The president, after all, does have that “veto pen” and the GOP will need more than the margin it enjoys in Congress to override any presidential veto.

The end of the old year might produce a new beginning in the year coming up.

Eternal optimist that I am, I remain hopeful the federal government can do some good for the country it is designed to help.

 

International news, political news

Clinton's foreign policy far from 'feckless'

1 Comment

Rick Perry calls Hillary Clinton’ foreign policy record “feckless,” does he.

He doesn’t know feckless from freckles.

https://wordpress.com/read/post/feed/12395410/583466090/

I would argue that the outgoing Texas governor needs to clarify his entire meaning.

He’s sounding more like a probable Republican presidential candidate in 2016. For that matter, Clinton is sounding more like a probable Democratic candidate in two years.

My own hunch is that the governor should concentrate on his potential GOP primary competition than worry too much just yet about how to take on the Democratic frontrunner.

As for his “feckless” comment, he’s joined the GOP echo chamber in brining up “Benghazi” as a sign that then-Secretary of State Clinton somehow botched the response to that terrible tragedy. I’m waiting — still — to understand precisely what Hillary Clinton her own self could have done differently to prevent the Sept. 11, 2012 siege that killed four Americans at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

Have there more attacks on U.S. soil by terrorists? No. Have we been killing the bad guys? Yes. Have we killed Osama bin Laden? Yes again. Did we rid Syria of chemical weapons? Yes. Have the economic sanctions leveled against Ukraine worked?

Yes. OK, so some of this occurred on John Kerry’s watch at State. The Texas governor, though, makes sure to equate our foreign policy with the president of the United States, who’s still on the job.

He compares her foreign policy record to California Gov. Jerry Brown’ record in handling the economy of his own state. Hmm. Actually, Gov. Perry, the California economy has rebounded right along with the rest of the country.

Well, the campaign is looking and sounding as if it’s beginning.

To think we’re still a whole year away from when it starts for real.

national news, political news, Uncategorized

Get well, '41'

The nightstand next to the bed is piling up with books I am fixin’ to read.

One of them just arrived there. It’s titled simply, “41: A Portrait of My Father.” “41” is George H.W. Bush. The author is “43,” George W. Bush.

The 43rd president of the United States makes no bones about his intentions in writing this book. He calls it a “love story” about the greatest man he’s ever known. “43” wants to share with the world the qualities that have lifted his father to greatness.

I wanted to mention this book in the wake of news that George H.W. Bush was hospitalized the other day after complaining of shortness of breath.

The man is 90 years of age. His health isn’t good. President Bush suffers from Parkinson’s disease. He no longer is able to walk. His speech sounds a bit labored these days.

But oh, yes. He jumps out of airplanes, which he did on his latest birthday.

President “43” recounts that event in the prologue to his book.

I happened to be in New Orleans the night in 1988 when then-Vice President Bush accepted his party’s nomination for the presidency. The Superdome was packed with cheering convention delegates running around the floor wearing goofy elephant hats and their clothing festooned with campaign pins.

The nominee called for a “kinder, gentler” nation and pledged to govern that way if elected president. He was elected handily that year over the man for whom I voted, Michael Dukakis. I’ll concede that Bush didn’t conduct a kinder and gentler campaign.

Still, the president governed with a spirit of bipartisanship that, um, has been missing of late.

I’ve long held a great appreciation for this man’s background that, in my view, prepared him handsomely for the job he earned in that 1988 election. I continue to believe that, on paper, George H.W. Bush was the most qualified man ever to serve as president. Think about it: World War II combat veteran and aviator; businessman, congressman from Houston, CIA director, U.N. ambassador, special envoy to China, Republican Party chairman, vice president of the United States.

I am grateful that I was able to express my thanks and appreciation to him for all he has done for his country. I attended an event here in Amarillo in 2007 in which President Bush was the keynote speaker. I got an invitation to a luncheon that day and then got to shake his hand in one of those “grip and grin” reception lines.

“Mr. President, I just want to thank you for your service to the country,” I told him as we shook hands. He nodded and offered what I think was a heartfelt “thank you for saying that” to me.

He’s done it all. I look forward to plowing into George W. Bush’s account of his father’s great life.

Get well, Mr. President.