Tag Archives: Greg Abbott

military news, national news, political news, State news

Gov. Abbott weighs in on Khan kerfuffle

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Now it’s Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s turn to speak out against remarks aimed at the parents of a slain U.S. Army hero.

Abbott, the state’s Republican chief executive who’s now backing GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump after backing Ted Cruz initially in the party’s presidential primary, said this, according to the Texas Tribune:

“The service and devotion of Gold Star families to America cannot be questioned,” Abbott said in a statement provided Monday to The Texas Tribune. “Captain [Humayun] Khan, like many heroes who paid the ultimate sacrifice, will be forever remembered for their service in protecting the freedoms we cherish in America.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/08/01/trump-attacks-greg-abbott-muslim-soldier/

OK, governor. Good words. But like so many Republican political leaders who now are backing Trump — who’s been battling Capt. Khan’s parents, Kzhir and Ghazala Khan, over their statements against the GOP nominee — he declined to say the rest of what needed to be said.

If he would have asked me to write his statement, I would have added: “Therefore, it is disgraceful that our party’s nominee, Donald Trump, would soil Capt. Khan’s service in such a manner by criticizing his parents for exercising their constitutional rights — as U.S. citizens — to speak out in a public political forum.”

Capt. Khan, a U.S. Army officer who happened to be Muslim, died in Iraq in 2004 while protecting soldiers under his command from the enemy. His parents spoke out at the Democratic convention against Trump’s candidacy.

Trump has said Kzhir Khan had “no right” to criticize him.

Actually, as a U.S. citizen, Mr. Khan had every right.

national news, political news

Shooter committed a ‘hate crime’

obama

The lunatic who opened fire on Dallas police officers this past week committed a “hate crime.”

So said President Barack Obama in a meeting today with police officials. He added that if the shooter had survived the rampage — in which he killed five policemen — he would have been prosecuted for committing a crime on the basis of his hatred for white police officers.

The thought occurs to me: Why do Obama critics keep insisting in light of this tragic event that he’s somehow “anti-police”?

I am having trouble processing this particular criticism. The president has spoken about the “vicious, despicable and calculated” act of violence against the officers. He has said such attacks on law enforcement is never justified. He has offered words of condolence to family members of the fallen officers and to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

But the criticism persists.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-dallas-police-shooting-hate-225390

Now he has referred to the shooter’s crime as of being of the “hate” variety. He compared the Dallas gunman’s act to the dastardly deed committed by the individual who killed those nine Charleston church members; those victims were black, the young man accused of that crime is white.

Sure, the president had his well-publicized “beer summit” after police wrongly accused an African-American academic of trying to burglarize his own home. Obama did accuse the police of acting “stupidly.” Those remarks seem to have stuck far more than the repeated statements in support of law enforcement that the president has made.

Well, the president will get another chance Tuesday to restate his support of the many thousands of police officers who perform their sworn duties with honor and distinction. He’ll speak in Dallas at an interfaith memorial service to honor the slain police officers.

Will those remarks quell the unfounded criticism? Hardly. He still needs to make them.

national news, political news, State news

Lt. Gov. Patrick reverted to his former self

dallas cops

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s amazing rant — only hours after the gunman cut loose on police officers in Dallas — didn’t sound like it should come from an elected statewide official.

No. It sounded like something that would shoot out of the mouth of, say, a talk-radio blowhard.

Oh, wait! It occurred to me that Lt. Gov. Patrick actually was a talk-radio blowhard before he entered politics as a state senator from Houston.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/a-tragedy-in-dallas/

Politicians of both major-party stripes spoke with calm assurance. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke of the need for national unity. Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump said our children need to be brought up in a safer, better world.

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott called for unity, prayer and support for our police officers, five of whom died in that Dallas carnage this past week.

Democrats and Republicans sounded — more or less — alike in their statements of sadness and resolve.

Then the Texas lieutenant governor had to pop off as he did on “Fox and Friends.” He said the protesters who fled the gunfire, seeking protection from the police, were “hypocrites.” They were protesting earlier officer-involved shootings in Baton Rouge and near St. Paul. Therefore, they were behaving “hypocritically” by seeking protection from the cops who, by the way, were chumming around with the marchers before all hell broke loose.

He hasn’t taken any of it back. Patrick hasn’t reconsidered the tone of his remarks. He’s right and everyone else is wrong, correct?

Well, that’s the modus operandi of your typical blowhard.

national news, political news, State news

Unity, compassion and then … Dan Patrick

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It’s been a remarkable past few days, hasn’t it?

Two young men were shot to death by police officers; one in Baton Rouge, La., the other in a St. Paul, Minn., suburb. Their deaths prompted demonstrations and marches around the country.

One of those marches occurred in Dallas, where Black Lives Matter organizers managed to stage a peaceful event through the city’s downtown. Police officers were mugging with protestors taking selfies of themselves and the men and women in blue.

Then a sniper opened fire, killing five of those officers. The nation was shattered by the violence.

We heard politicians of all stripes speaking essentially in unison: This has to stop; the killing of police officers is unacceptable; we pray for the officers’ families and for the city has been stricken.

Then came the words from Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick …

He shows up on “Fox and Friends” and says the protestors who fled the shooting were “hypocrites” because they sought protection from the very people whose conduct in those earlier events they were protesting.

Patrick then blamed Black Lives Matter and — of course! — the media for the senseless carnage in Dallas. I guess Patrick doesn’t understand that the shooter’s action were diametrically opposed to the message Black Lives Matter was seeking to convey. Oh, and Black Lives Matter protestors also were being shot at.

I was appalled when Texans elected this guy lieutenant governor in 2014. To hear him spew such garbage in the wake of this national tragedy, when circumstances compel politicians to use good judgment and circumspection in their public remarks, only reinforces my disgust in this individual.

Patrick’s idiotic rant doesn’t diminish the outpouring of good will that has come from around the country toward Texas’s third-largest city. Indeed, Dallas has been through even more profound national tragedy before and I have every confidence it will bounce back. It will recover emotionally. That recovery won’t happen overnight.

Facilitating the city’s return to normal, though, requires the type of political leadership we’ve witnessed from the likes of Gov. Greg Abbott, Dallas Mayor Michael Rawlings, from President Barack Obama, from Dallas Police Chief David Brown, from spiritual leaders of all faiths and from members of Congress on both sides of the political aisle.

The city does not need the kind of lunacy that came out of the mouth of Dan Patrick, who should be ashamed of himself. I do not, however, expect him to exhibit any such shame.

State news

Lt. Gov. Patrick shows off his mean streak

Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, questions John Bradley during a hearing by members of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009, in Austin, Texas. Legislators heard testimony from Bradley, the new chairman of the revamped forensic science commission, and attempted to learn the status of the case of executed convicted killer Cameron Todd Willingham. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)

I had planned to keep quiet about this display of intemperance from Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

Then I thought I’d speak out.

While the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, was appealing for calm, unity and peace, the state’s No. 2 elected official took quite another approach.

Dan Patrick decided to attack the protestors in Dallas last night for running when they heard gunshots. They sought protection from the people whose activities they were protesting, Patrick said.

He called the frightened protestors “hyprocrites.”

How in the world does this individual justify such mean-spiritedness in light of what happened in Dallas?

Five law enforcement officials — four from the Dallas Police Department and one from the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Authority — have been shot to death. Seven others are injured, some of them seriously.

The city, state and nation are in utter and complete grief over what has happened.

http://beta.dallasnews.com/news/dallas-ambush/2016/07/08/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-calls-dallas-protesters-hypocrites-running-snipers-bullets

And the state’s lieutenant governor hurls epithets at those who — until the gunfire erupted — were engaging in a peaceful march to protest the shooting deaths of two young black men in other communities by police officers.

Lt. Gov. Patrick has disgraced himself … and the state he represents.

International news, State news

First it was ‘Brexit,’ now it’s ‘Texit’ … sheesh!

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Many of us in Texas knew this might happen.

A fringe outfit called the Texas Nationalist Movement has hailed the British referendum that endorses Great Britain’s exit from the European Union.

Now these yahoos want Texas to follow suit. They want a referendum to decide whether Texas can exit the United States of America.

Sigh …

http://kfdm.com/news/local/texas-nationalists-call-on-gov-abbott-to-support-texit-vote

“It is past time that the people of Texas had their say on our continued relationship with the Union and its sprawling federal bureaucracy,” said Daniel Miller, president of the TNM.

Really, dude?

He’s asking Gov. Greg Abbott to support the idea of referring this idea to Texas voters. Keep asking. Abbott ain’t going to do it.

The “sprawling federal bureaucracy” is responsible for providing a lot of services that even Texas nationalists would support. Medicare health insurance? Social Security retirement income? National defense?

I feel the need to remind Daniel Miller that we did this once already. We joined several other states that went to war with the Union. Texas and the rest of the Confederate States of America lost that fight.

The parallel with what has transpired in Great Britain just doesn’t exist.

This is a free country where people are guaranteed the right to speak out, even when they spout idiocy in the public forum.

I am reminded of President Abraham Lincoln’s pearl of wisdom that “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

This “Texit” talk is the stuff of fools.

political news, State news

Clinton, Trump: party unifiers

donald

Texas Democrats are meeting in San Antonio this weekend.

They appear to be downright giddy about their chances in this election year. Then again, they proclaim their giddiness at every election cycle, only to be disappointed when the ballots are counted.

Do you remember when former state Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth ran for governor in 2014 and how Democrats said that was the year? It wasn’t. Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott thumped Davis by more than 20 percentage points.

That was then, Democrats are saying now.

They’re squaring off against a Republican Party being led by one Donald J. Trump as their party’s presidential nominee.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston asked convention attendees: “Can you really believe that they nominated Donald Trump?” Why, the delegates couldn’t get enough of the “good news.”

Trump is going to be the unifier the Democrats need to help them carry Texas this fall with Hillary Rodham Clinton at the top of their ticket.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/18/analysis-republican-whos-keeping-texas-democrats-t/

But here comes the wet blanket.

Hillary Clinton is going to unify the Republicans, too.

There are differing dynamics, as I see it, working against both parties’ presumed nominees.

Democrats cannot believe that Trump — the huckster, reality TV celebrity, hotel and real estate mogul, thrice-married media star — is actually running for president of the United States of America. They dare not take him too lightly, and delegates are being warned of the risks inherent if they do.

Republicans, meanwhile, detest Clinton. They’ve been looking high and low for something that rises to the level of an indictment. They can’t find anything. They’ve hated her since her husband was president from 1993 to 2001.

I’m not going to project which emotion — the Democrats’ perverse joy or the Republicans’ loathing — is going to be the greater partisan unifying effect.

The major concern facing Republicans in Texas might not be the Democrats. It might be that their own party is showing signs of splitting apart because of their nominee’s own trouble within the party he wants to lead.

That, all by itself, might be enough to put Texas in play for Democrats, giving them a real honest-to-goodness reason for optimism.

national news, political news, State news

Abbott makes simple statement of solidarity

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gov mansion

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott flew the flag at the Governor’s Mansion.

It was the Florida state flag, which he unfurled to honor the victims of the Orlando nightclub massacre, the worst such event in U.S. history.

He offered a statement calling on Texans to pray for the victims of the shooting. I applaud the governor’s simple statement of support for those who were killed and injured and for the loved ones who are grieving or praying for the victims’ complete recovery.

Then he lost me … almost.

Abbott used the occasion to make a statement that we need to do more to stamp out radical Islamic terrorism.

The gunman, an American, swore fealty to the Islamic State before opening fire at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which caters to the city’s gay community. FBI director James Comey, though, has suggested that his agency cannot find any indication that the shooter was acting as part of an ISIS master plot; he was a lone wolf, a guy acting on his own.

My question tonight is this: How does the federal government stop a lone madman?

It’s a no-brainer to suggest that the government needs to do more to combat terrorism. Any act taken committed against us — whether it’s on a 9/11-type scale or anything less audacious — always means we need to “do more.”

Before we get too worked up about this latest attack, let’s remember what every expert the media could corral after 9/11 told us: There should be no doubt that we’ll get hit again by terrorists.

As for the latest incident, the best law enforcement minds on Earth are trying to ascertain whether the shooter was acting out of hatred for gay people or whether he was acting as a radical Islamic terrorist.

I’m glad the governor flew the Florida flag at Governor’s Mansion. The politicization? It seems a bit premature.

political news, State news

Texas may prove to be Trump GOP testing ground

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If Donald J. Trump is having trouble wooing Texas Republicans into his embrace, then he might be having even more trouble everywhere else.

Ross Ramsey’s excellent analysis in the Texas Tribune lays out the problem that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is having as he tightens the grip on his quest for the White House.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/06/analysis-texas-pols-trying-muster-words-support-tr/

Ramsey hold up Ted Cruz as an example of Trump’s Texas dilemma.

A lot of Texas politicians backed the junior U.S. senator’s bid for the White House. Cruz backed out of the race after the Indiana primary. He’s been mainly silent about Trump’s campaign ever since. Cruz has returned to work in the Senate.

His friends and allies, though, aren’t any more eager to attach themselves to Trump’s train than Cruz has been.

Trump said some pretty spiteful things about Cruz during the campaign. And, no, they didn’t gin up much sympathy from me … as I didn’t want Cruz to be the next president of the United States. If you’re Cruz, though, you should take some of these epithets personally.

And then there was that hideous attack on Heidi Cruz, for crying out loud!

Gov. Greg Abbott is kinda/sorta backing Trump. Ramsey noted that recently Abbott made a speech backing Trump without ever mentioning the candidate’s name. How do you do that?

Then again, Abbott has his own Trump burden to bear, given the state’s investigation into the defunct Trump University and the campaign contribution that showed up immediately after Abbott — while he was Texas attorney general — dropped the state’s legal action.

Hmmm.

Let’s not forget former Gov. Rick Perry, who once called Trump a “cancer on conservatism.” He’s now backing him out loud and proudly. As Ramsey points out, Perry also said he’d accept a vice-presidential invitation if it came from Trump.

Many actual Republicans in Texas accuse Trump of being one of them in name only. You know, a RINO.

But as Texas Republicans have demonstrated time and again since ascending to power in this state, they are willing to put actual qualifications and fitness aside when selecting candidates for high political office. Party labels matter more than anything else.

To be fair, Democrats did much the same thing when they ran the show. We still actually have a smattering of those “Yellow Dog Democrats” out there who’d vote for a yellow dog before they’d vote for a Republican.

Trump’s fight for the love of Texas Republicans remains a daunting task. As Ramsey notes:

“Many others in the GOP seem stuck on the road between their original choices for the Republican presidential nomination and Trump, the apparent winner.  Some will convert. Some will get out and proselytize for the nominee.

“But not yet. That first sale is the hardest one to close.”

political news, State news

A summation of Trump’s unfitness

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Erica Grieder writes a blog for Texas Monthly.

She is highly opinionated, which is why I enjoy reading her blog. She doesn’t hide her disdain for Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

She writes: “My contempt for Donald Trump is admittedly sincere and abiding, but I suspect that even observers who take a more temperate view of the man might agree that the Republican Party’s decision to accept him as their presidential nominee is a calculation that could haunt them for years.

Here is more of what she wrote about Trump’s candidacy: “Trump is GOP nominee for president. His opponent, in the general election, will almost certainly be Hillary Clinton. He is technically qualified to hold the office, should he win 270 electoral votes, as he was born in the United States and is over the age of 35. At the same time, Trump is an uninformed and emotionally unstable plague who has, over 70 years of life, proven himself incapable of wielding any form of power without immediately looking for some ham-fisted way he can leverage it to serve his profoundly fragile ego.”

Here’s the entire blog posted on the Burka Blog website:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/greg-abbotts-trump-problem/

She writes that Gov. Greg Abbott is backing Trump even though he knows Trump is a phony and a fraud.

Back to one of the points in her paragraph that I shared with you here.

Trump’s candidacy is not built on a commitment to public service. It is built solely on his monstrous ego. Listen to what he says about his supposedly immense wealth, about his “world-class business” ventures, about the women in his life, about his singular plans to “make America great.”

Public service? It’s a foreign concept to this guy.

Say what you will about the ills of the nation — which I believe have been grossly overstated by Trump and those who have glommed on to what passes for this fellow’s campaign message.

We must do better than elect an entertainer with zero experience dealing with a government he now proposes to fix. He has no template from which to pattern whatever he intends to do.

If he intends to repair the government, someone needs to explain to me what he intends to produce.

Does this guy have a clue about anything that resembles an understanding of the massive governmental machine he intends to operate?