Tag Archives: High Plains Blogger

media news

I hereby offer an apology

An apology is a rare thing to receive on a blog, but I am about to offer one now. I made a pledge — maybe more than once — to move on from Donald J. Trump and to concentrate exclusively on the here and now and to look only at pols I consider to be relevant.

I am sorry for failing to make good on that promise.

It’s not entirely my fault. You see, Trump keeps injecting himself into the news. Since this blog is about the news, public policy, politics and at times the individuals who make news, well, it becomes imperative for your friendly High Plains Blogger to comment on it.

Trust me when I say this, because it is the truth: I want Donald Trump to disappear. I want him gone from the public stage. I want him removed from the nation’s conscience.

He won’t honor my request and simply vanish. Poof! Be gone, Donald!

Where do we go from here? I won’t make any more promises I likely cannot keep. So I’ll keep commenting on The Donald’s comings, goings and musings as long he keeps retaining some viability in the nation’s political process.

I won’t comment on every single thing that flies out of the liar’s pie hole. I can make that pledge. So there.

Please accept my apology … and keep reading and sharing my thoughts. I appreciate those who do.

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local news, media news

Streak goes on

Allow me to boast about the blog you are reading at this moment.

I just posted an item for the 200th consecutive day of posts on High Plains Blogger. I like writing frequently. I have declared myself to be an expert on next to nothing, but I do have opinions on damn near everything.

When something piques my fancy, I like writing about it.

My current streak is now 200 days in length. I am far from finished.

The Ukraine War is keeping me fueled up. So is the 1/5 House select committee investigation on the insurrection.

The blog is mostly political but occasionally it strays into slice of life matters, feel-good items, commentary about retirement, grandparenthood and even about our precious Toby the Puppy.

OK. Bragging is now over. I encourage you to read the blog and to share it whenever you feel moved to do so.

Thus, I will thank each of you in advance for reading this blog. It gives me reason to keep going.

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International news, media news

War fatigue sets in

Allow me this brief admission, of which I am not proud, to be sure: I am suffering from early onset of “war fatigue.” Yes, the Ukraine-Russia war has worn me out.

Understand this, though. Our hearts are breaking over the suffering that Russia’s bombing and artillery attacks are inflicting on people who are simply trying to defend their homeland against an invading military force. It’s not that I am going to dismiss their suffering and wring my hands over having to watch it on TV.

It’s merely that the brave journalists who are reporting from the front have saturated me with news that is beginning to sound repetitive. Russians are escalating their attacks; they are hitting civilian targets; they are inflicting casualties among civilians, including defenseless children; those who die are being buried in mass graves; Vladimir Putin keeps shunning pleas to stop the invasion. Over and over again.

We had our granddaughter with us for a couple of nights. My wife made the decision to shield her from the news.

Does this mean that High Plains Blogger is taking a break from commenting on information that leaks into your blogger’s noggin? Hah! Hardly.

I am likely to end my news boycott soon, given that I happen to be addicted to the news. I’ll certainly divert my attention fully to this unfolding story when something significant happens. The war might expand into NATO nations; Putin might deploy chemical weapons; President Biden might decide to ratchet up sanctions even more.

Or, and this would be the best news, there could be a cease-fire that paves a clear path to a peace treaty.

Until any of that happens, I’m tuning out the war … for now.

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national news, political news

Now he’s just ‘Donald’

I have made a command decision on my blog. Future references to Donald J. Trump are going to be limited to just use of his first name.

Yes, I will hereby make initial references to the former Liar in Chief using his first and last name; subsequent references will be simply “Trump” or “Donald.” I think I’ll stick with “Donald” most of the time.

Hey, I can make that decision regarding my blog. Because it is my blog.

I refused during his term in office to link the terms “President” and “Trump” consecutively; I have held true to that just now, if you get my drift.

Therefore, I am no longer going to use the term “former president,” or “ex-president,” or even “former POTUS” to describe Donald in the future. He doesn’t deserve any sort of respect. He won’t get it from me.

I hope to dial back the frequency of blog posts referring to Donald. I’ll do my best to be more selective.

Hang with me, OK? Thanks. Now … let’s go on down the road together.

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local news

The streak continues

I don’t write often these days about my blog, which I named High Plains Blogger when I set it up more than a decade ago. I’ll take a brief leap into self-congratulations.

My blog is in the midst of another pretty healthy streak. I have gone 141 consecutive days posting items about this and that. It’s mostly political, but I have branched out to talk about sports on occasion, about my retired (or shall I say semi-retired) life and also about my beloved family.

Oh, and then there’s Toby the Puppy, the pooch who makes my wife and me laugh every single day.

A few of my friends have said they “marvel” at the prolific nature of this blog. A couple of them are bloggers themselves. I admire their work, as it is generally a lot more thoughtful than my own submissions. I haven’t told them as much; I will make sure I do so in short order.

But my blog is part of who I am. I have been writing on High Plains Blogger since before I left my daily print journalism career in August 2012.

I will acknowledge that the current streak isn’t as long as a previous streak that got curtailed after more than 350 straight days by a technical glitch. I missed a day — or maybe it was two of them. I’m back at it now.

I intend to keep doing this for as long as I can string sentences together. It is a lead-pipe cinch I won’t run out of topics on which to comment.

Let the topics keep offering themselves to me. I am standing by.

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national news

Anger makes me angry

Anger is an emotion that fills me with — yep, that’s right — anger, lots of anger.

I get angry with myself for feeling as angry as I do at times, particularly over matters or individuals I cannot control. The current political climate swirling around us provides me with the latest example of how angry I have become.

I am angry at the politicians and their sycophants who continue to keep The Big Lie alive and kicking. The Big Lie, as you know, purports to suggest that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election. He didn’t. He lost it bigly.

He came to Texas this past weekend and proclaimed, among many falsehoods, that the “election system is corrupt.” Dammit to hell, anyway! It isn’t! When he says such a thing, he defames the good men and women associated with both major political parties who take an oath to do their jobs with integrity and honesty and then follow that oath to the letter.

That makes me angry as hell. However, I also get angry with myself because the only weapon I have is this blog in which I can express my anger. I want to make a difference. I want this anger to sink into the thick skulls of the individuals who ignite these hard feelings. It doesn’t. I feel as though I am talking to the chair on which I am sitting at this moment.

My anger is visceral these days in a way I have never experienced. I find myself using harsh language when referencing the ex-POTUS. So help me, I never have used this kind of language when referring to POTUSes who never got my vote.

I want the anger to pass. I fear that the only way that’ll happen will be for the man who lights the fuse to disappear. I just will have to deal with my anger and seek to avoid getting so damn angry at myself.

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Uncategorized

Encounter proves a point

I am going to tell you about a brief — and fairly unpleasant — encounter I had with someone who believes retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is “an honorable man.”

This person delivered a bit of proof I sought to make in an earlier blog post.

It was a social media encounter. This person and I belong to the same Facebook group that features conservative commentary. She wrote something about Flynn being an honorable man. I responded that I don’t think he’s honorable. I said he lied to the FBI, he sought to persuade Donald Trump to declare “martial law” to keep his job after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden and he led the “lock her up!” chant at the GOP convention in 2016, wanting Hillary Clinton to be jailed over the email matter.

My foe said Flynn had been “exonerated” on all the charges brought against him. Thus, according to my acquaintance, he is honorable.

Her final response to me was that I am a “Democrat” and I adhere to the “fake news” being peddled by progressives. I am “involved with their ideology.”

I had made a point in an earlier blog post about the impossibility of discussing policy matters with those who adhere to Trump’s Big Lie. I believe my latest foe has proved my point. I will engage this person any longer. I did think it was useful to make this point in another post on this blog.

Debate is impossible | High Plains Blogger

It’s not that I believe I am a brilliant thinker. It’s just that every now and again individuals rise to the occasion to make me seem a lot smarter than I actually am.

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local news, media news

Blog alive and well

It’s been a good while since I’ve waxed rhapsodic about my blog and the joy I receive writing it.

So, I’ll offer a few words to remind you of the only “full-time job” I have. It is High Plains Blogger.

First, a couple of acknowledgements are in order.

One is that my blog traffic has slipped a bit from the high-water mark I experienced in 2019. I don’t know why that’s the case. It might have something to do with the topics I choose for commentary. Maybe readers of this blog are getting bored with me. I regret that terribly if that is so. I will work diligently moving ahead to make the blog more interesting.

I named this blog to remind readers from where I wrote it. We were living on the High Plains of Texas when I started this blog back in 2009. And, yes, it’s a bit of a tribute to one of my favorite film artists, Clint Eastwood, who starred in those “spaghetti westerns,” one of which was called “High Plains Drifter.” I decided to keep the title after we moved from the High Plains to the Metroplex. Why? Because the blog had developed a “brand” that is recognizable. Why trifle with what folks know, right?

Another aspect I need to acknowledge is that I am not contributing the volume of work to the blog as I did before. I have been kinda busy, working as a freelance reporter for the Farmersville Times, a weekly in Collin County, and for KETR-FM, the public radio station associated with Texas A&M University-Commerce. My third gig just dropped out of the sky only recently; I am working a temporary job as an editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News. All of this takes time away from writing for the blog.

I have enjoyed my post-full-time journalism journey immensely. I no longer am fully retired. I cannot declare myself to be “retired.” I pretty much come and go as I please … most of the time. It surely beats working full time for a living.

I will continue with the blog for as long as I am able. To those who enjoy the blog and support its political leanings, I trust that is good news. To those who grind their teeth when they read my musings, well … too bad. Live with it.

Let’s enjoy the ride.

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political news

Wanting to shed politics

Those who know me only through my blog or from what I used to do for a living, which was write and edit opinion pieces for newspapers, seem to believe I am wedded to politics.

That I cannot live a day without talking politics with … someone, anyone.

Not true. There are days, such as today, when I want to set all that aside. So, I am going to do that very thing for the rest of the day.

I plan to spend the day with my wife, sons, our daughter-in-law and our granddaughter. We are going to yuk it up in the house and carry on without a worry in the world.

Then I suppose I’ll get back to the regular stuff in the morning. However, I won’t guarantee it. You see, I ain’t addicted to politics.

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DC riot

An insurrection? Um … yep

A critic of this blog, a gentleman with whom I have a casual acquaintance, posited an interesting notion that I believe needs a response.

He wrote: An insurrection is an attempt to overtake a government. How are you going to overtake a government without weapons?

He refers to the riot that erupted 1/6 on Capitol Hill. I have called the riot an “insurrection.” So have others. Those on the far right have declined to use that term. That is their call. I’ll stick with my description of what happened.

My critic wonders how one can have an “overtake a government without weapons.”

Actually you can. Indeed, from what I witnessed on 1/6, the mob that stormed into the Capitol Building had plenty of “weapons,” which they used with brutal efficiency as they stormed into the halls of our federal government. Did you see ’em beat the cops with flag poles, blasting them with chemical spray, throwing fire extinguishers … that kind of thing? Oh, and what about the zip ties recovered from many of the suspects arrested on that day?

What would have occurred had they been able to storm into the rooms where members of Congress were accepting the Electoral College ballots that declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election? The terrorists, as near as I could tell, weren’t joking when they hollered “Hang Mike Pence!” while looking for the vice president of the United States, who was presiding over this governmental ritual.

Could this mob of terrorists stopped the process of certifying the result? Absolutely!

The best news of all is that they were prevented from getting their grimy mitts on more victims by quick-thinking Capitol Police officers.

My blog critic referred to the “so-called insurrection.” There was nothing “so-called” about we witnessed that day.

The U..S. House of Representatives select committee that is ramping up its probe of that horrific event vows to get to the truth. May the panel find all of it.

One more point: I checked my American Heritage Dictionary and looked up “insurrection.” It describes the word as “an act of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government.”

Yep. That’s what we witnessed on 1/6.

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