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Let's avoid the 'vain' epithet

There’s a phrase that sends me into orbit every time I hear it.

It comes from those who don’t know better, often from those who’ve never answered their nation’s call to place themselves in harm’s way.

The phrase is likely to resurface in the weeks or months ahead if the situation in Iraq goes completely south and the Sunni insurgents take control of the country.

It will come out like this: “All those servicemen and women we lost in Iraq will have died in vain.”

That is the most preposterous, insulting, degrading and unpatriotic thing one can say about a fallen warrior.

Whatever happens in the conflict that has erupted in Iraq, none of those nearly 4,500 brave Americans lost during the Iraq War will have died in vain.

When someone wears their uniform and receives a lawful order to go into battle, he or she is acting on behalf of the rest of us back home. That individual is conducting himself or herself as honorably as is humanly possible.

To suggest that an individual dies “in vain” because of a failed strategy, or set of policies or even a battlefield tactic demeans the service they performed.

The Vietnam War produced a lot of that kind of empty rhetoric. It’s been said many times over many decades now that the 58,000 individuals who gave their all in Vietnam died “in vain.” They did not. They died in service to their country.

I’m quite sure some folks will quibble with what “dying in vain” really means. They’ll seek to parse the language and suggest they mean no disrespect to the fallen when they say such things.

Me? I take it as an insult in the extreme.

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Father's Day stirs memories

Father’s Day has been a joyous, but oddly strange, event for me for the past, oh, 34 years or so.

My own father died in the late summer of 1980. He was just 59. He was out cavorting on a business/pleasure trip just north of Vancouver, British Columbia when a small speedboat he was riding in crashed and capsized. Two of the men survived the crash; Dad was one of the two who died.

In recent years I’ve tried to imagine him as an old man. He’d be 93 now. I know a lot of 90-plus-year-old men. Many of them are quite vital, full of energy and ideas, are fully engaged in the world around them. Would Dad be like that? We’ll never know.

Mom would die just four years after Dad. She was just 61 when she passed away. She had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and, take it from me, no one ever should endure the misery of watching a cherished member of your family vanish before your eyes — even as she sits right in front of you.

But Father’s Day has been a blessing for me nonetheless.

Yes, I still miss both of my parents terribly. However, I’ve been blessed beyond all measure by the life I’ve been able to lead. I owe those blessings to my wife and my own two sons.

We’ve ventured far and wide as a family. We’ve gone to places, seen things and met the most interesting people possible. We’ve been able to share much of that together. I have enjoyed the ride immensely along the way and hope they’ve all enjoyed it as well.

My sons are now successful in their respective careers. They’ve forged good lives and have grown into responsible men. One of them has added blessings even above all that by marrying a lovely young woman and producing our first granddaughter who, I shall declare here and now, is the most beautiful girl on Planet Earth.

It’s been said that everyone has a story to tell. This is just a tiny fraction of my own story. This post, though, isn’t about me. It’s about my blessed family.

Those young men and their mother are the reasons today I celebrate Father’s Day.

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Mexico becomes migrant thoroughfare

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is making a valid point about the latest immigration crisis to hit Texas and other border states.

All those undocumented immigrants who are flooding into Texas — more than 40,000 at last count — are coming not from Mexico, but from beyond Mexico. They’re fleeing to the United States from Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and points south of Mexico’s border with Central America.

Thus, it is in U.S. interests to help Mexico seal its borders with Central America.

http://www.panhandlepbs.org/news/texas-tribune/cornyn-us-should-help-mexico-seal-its-southern-border/

Cornyn, R-Texas, said during a conference call with reporters, “That 500-mile border between Guatemala and Mexico is a sieve. Once these unaccompanied minors or other adults get in to the hands of the gangs that smuggle them through areas controlled by the Zetas or other cartels, this is not a benign situation. This is a dangerous and deadly … journey.”

They’ve been pouring into Texas, Arizona and New Mexico — but mostly into Texas. Border Patrol agents and local police are arresting them by the thousands.

Naturally, critics of the Obama administration are finding a way to blame them for the trouble. It’s been brewing for years. Cornyn himself has blamed current immigration policy as enticing this flood of illegal immigrants. The view in Central America, Cornyn said, is that “the administration simply will not enforce current immigration laws.”

I would suggest the arrests of the immigrants implies that the U.S. government does enforce those laws.

Helping our neighbor secure its southern border, though, is in our national interest.

It also might be time to remind Mexico of its own responsibility to stop these illegal immigrants from passing through its territory en route to the United States. Perhaps a little geopolitical neighborliness would be in order.

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Carrier headed to Persian Gulf

Here we go.

The United States has just dispatched a nuclear-powered attack aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush — one of the newest ships in the fleet — to the Persian Gulf.

Its mission is to protect Americans who might be put in harm’s way in the fighting that threatens to engulf Iraq.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/u-s-aircraft-carrier-ordered-persian-gulf-wake-iraq-unrest-n131256

This is a most interesting development.

Just so everyone is in the know, the George H.W. Bush is packing an immense amount of firepower.

I had the honor about two decades ago of spending a few nights aboard the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, another of the Navy’s premier attack carriers. I was there to cover a tour led by the late U.S. Rep. Charles Wilson, D-Lufkin, who wanted to tour the ship, buck up the sailors and Marines aboard and tell them how proud he was of the service they perform for the country.

The Carl Vinson, I hasten to add, was the ship where they took Osama bin Laden’s body in May 2011; he then was “buried at sea,” reportedly in a respectful manner.

But to the point. The commanding officer of the Carl Vinson at the time was Capt. John Payne and he told us about the incredible amount of ordnance those ships pack while they’re deployed. I, of course, asked the obvious question: “Skipper, are you carrying any nukes?” He answered the only way he could: “You know I can’t answer that.” He had the slightest smile on his face as he replied.

There remains immense conventional firepower on these ships.

The George H.W. Bush is packing all of that — and perhaps even more, given that it is such a new ship.

This, I submit, is one of the “other options” President Obama is considering in response to the Iraq crisis. He has declared he won’t send ground troops back into Iraq. He hasn’t ruled out air strikes.

But with a massive warship headed straight into the war zone, my hunch is that we might be getting ready to unleash some of that firepower on the bad guys.

Stay tuned for the next act.

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Lance Ito: circus ringmaster

Twenty years ago this week, a horrible crime occurred in front of a Los Angeles-area condo. Two people were stabbed to death. One of them was the former wife of a football legend; the other was her friend.

The football legend, O.J. Simpson, went on trial for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman and was acquitted after an eight-month circus presided over by LA County Superior Court Judge Lance Ito.

Ito made a fateful decision early on: He allowed TV cameras to record the event. I guess it’s OK to allow the public in on these kinds of proceedings, but only if the judge sets some rules for the conduct of the lawyers who’ll take the stage.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/13/justice/o-j-simpson-where-are-they-now/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Ito apparently didn’t do that. The trial went on for eight months. The 12 jurors were sequestered, kept away from their families and friends and left to talk only among themselves.

The trial dragged on and on and on.

I bring this up to relay a point made to me during the trial by the then-chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, who came by for a visit at the newspaper where I worked at the time. Chief Justice Tom Phillips — a former trial court judge in Houston — and I talked for a bit about the Simpson trial and he told me something fascinating.

He said Ito had the power to limit the time the lawyers needed to make their case. He said Texas trial law gives judges here that kind of power and he said he was quite certain California law had similar provisions that gave the presiding judge the power to keep the lawyers on a tight leash.

Ito gave the so-called Simpson “Dream Team” of lawyers and the prosecution’s Team of Nincompoops all the time they requested to prance, preen and pontificate in front of the jurors — and, of course, millions of the rest of America watching on television.

As one who generally favors televised court proceedings, I prefer instead to watch a more tightly controlled event than what we got two decades ago with the Trial of the Century.

Lance Ito is going to retire from the bench next January. I’d love to read a memoir, should he write one, that explains the “logic” behind letting those lawyers run wild in a public courtroom.

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Brat vs. Trammell

David Brat vs. Jack Trammell will become, I guarantee, the most watched contest for the U.S. House of Representatives in this election cycle.

It’s not because either of them has a sparkling political resume. Or that they’ve made huge names for themselves in their shared occupation. It’s because one of them, Brat, knocked off one of the most powerful members of Congress in the Republican Party primary this past week in the most stunning upset in anyone’s memory. In doing so, Brat has leveled the playing field significantly for Trammell, his Democratic opponent this fall, to possibly win a seat in the Virginia congressional district that has been thought to be strongly Republican.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/2014-virginia-election-jack-trammell-eric-cantor-107855.html?hp=f2

This one’s going to be a mind-blower.

Brat and Trammell are professors at a college I’d never heard of before this past week. Brat teaches economics, Trammell teaches sociology at Randolph-Macon College. You haven’t heard of it, either? I didn’t think so.

I’m sure it’s a fine school.

Back to Brat and Trammell.

Brat’s victory was a stunner. He was outspent by a gazillion to one by lame-duck House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. The turnout for the GOP primary was dismal, which suited Brat just fine. His supporters were the more dedicated bunch, which always bodes well for a low-turnout election.

He campaigned essentially on a single issue: immigration reform. He’s against it. Cantor was for some version of reform. Brat accused Cantor of favoring “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants. The label stuck to Cantor like Velcro.

Trammell? I know nothing about the guy, except that he’s as much of a political novice as Brat.

He is a last-minute candidate. Democrats were without a chance if Cantor had won. He didn’t. Now they think they’ve got a puncher’s chance against Brat. But as Politico.com reports, Trammell’s gone into a “lockdown” since the GOP primary. I reckon he’s starting to assemble something resembling a campaign strategy for the 7th Congressional District of Virginia.

He’d better roll something impressive. The eyes of the nation will be upon both of these guys.

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Just wondering: Why the no-bill?

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It’s a bit dicey for me to question a grand jury’s deliberation, given that no one other than the grand jurors are supposed to know what goes on when the doors are closed.

However, I’m wondering about that Randall County no-bill decision regarding the Amarillo Animal Control Department’s euthanizing of unwanted pets.

The grand jury decided against filing criminal charges against anyone involved in what’s become something of a scandal at the animal shelter.

Animals were being put down in violation of state law. They were given the lethal drugs while failing to be weighed so officials at the shelter would know much of the drug to administer. There were reports of animals suffering greatly during the euthanasia process.

The top two animal control officers, director Mike McGee and assistant director Shannon Barlow both “retired” recently from the city — which, of course, is laughable on its face. They’d been placed on administrative leave when the animal control troubles became known. They should have been fired.

District Attorney James Farren, whose office presented evidence to the grand jury, expressed surprise at the no-bill. He’s not alone in the surprise. The grand jury said it found no animal cruelty at the shelter? I don’t get that one.

If animals weren’t suffering needlessly, then why did the grand jury ever get this case in the first place?

It’s one thing to accept — even grudgingly — a grand jury’s decision. It’s quite another to believe in it.

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For whom will Dewhurst vote?

My mind is wandering as I sit at my computer, so I thought I’d share this idle thought.

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is still suffering emotional wounds from his loss to state Sen. Dan Patrick in the lieutenant governor’s Republican runoff.

He knows Patrick well, having worked with him in the Texas Senate, over which Dewhurst presides as lieutenant governor.

Dewhurst also knows Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, who is running against Patrick in the general election for lieutenant governor.

My idle thought? Who will get Dewhurst’s vote this fall?

I’m really in no position to ask Dewhurst directly. Even if I did, he wouldn’t answer. He does get to vote in secret, just like the rest of us. Heck, he might even lie about who he’ll vote for. None of us ever would know the difference.

My trick knee, though, suggests that Van de Putte stands at least a decent chance of getting at least one crossover vote from a Republican.

Patrick said some pretty mean things to and about Dewhurst in the primary and then in the runoff. That’s the nature of campaigns in many cases. Patrick, though, tried to suggest in so many words that Dewhurst is a closet liberal or moderate — or something other than a staunch conservative, which is how Dewhurst sought to portray himself.

Do these harsh things just disappear when all the votes are counted? I think not.

Just wondering out loud …

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Gas prices zoom up … why?

Oil speculators have become the bane of many Americans’ existence.

They’re the folks who push panic buttons every time a crisis flares in a region of the world that produces oil.

Iraq. Oil. Crisis. Price spikes. Boom!

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/iraq-gas-prices-107841.html?hp=l5

The price of gasoline jumped a dime per gallon today across Amarillo because, I guess, speculators have determined that the Iraq crisis is going to result in a major disruption of oil from that region to the rest of the world.

Politico.com reports that the Midwest region of the United States is the first to feel the hit. I guess that would include the Texas Panhandle.

President Obama said the crisis in Iraq hadn’t created “major disruptions of oil supplies.”

I’ll take him at his word.

Back to oil speculators. I continue to be amazed that gas prices are subject to these dramatic increases. Decreases — if they come — usually arrive in dribs and drabs. A penny here and there. Maybe two cents a gallon.

Frankly, it remains a mystery to me that the price of oil has to move at all even when these crises erupt.

This country imports a tiny fraction of its oil from Iraq in the first place. The bulk of our imported oil — which now comprises a minority of all the petroleum consumed by Americans — comes from friendlier sources, such as Canada and Mexico.

But it’s those speculators that drive me more than just a tad nuts as the price of gasoline zooms upward.

I don’t believe I’m the only person who shares this view.

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Listen carefully to Fox News

Living in the World That Fox News Built

The above link is a short essay posted on Mother Jones, a left-wing political website.

The blog posted here is from a guy named Kevin Drum, who invites viewers to watch Fox News for an extended period to fully understand how the network has helped redefine the American political conservative movement.

Drum writes: “Over the years, the more that I’ve thought about the evolution of conservative politics over the past few decades, the more I become convinced that Fox News is really at the center of it. Sure, it all started with a base of Reagan and the Christian Right and talk radio and the Republican takeover of the South. But Newt Gingrich was the game changer. He’s the one who brought conservative politics to a truly new, truly unprecedented level of toxic rancor.”

I don’t watch Fox News much any longer. I used to tune in to a few news shows. Then I, too, became disinterested in the Fox bias, which of course ran counter to my own bias — which I admit to freely and without apology.

This notion of watching a media outlet with which one disagrees takes me back to a time, back in Beaumont, when I did the same thing.

I was talking at the time to the then-mayor of Beaumont, Maury Meyers, a fine gentleman with whom I had a nice relationship. I complained to Meyers about Rush Limbaugh’s TV show, which aired briefly in the early 1990s. Maury invited me to watch more than a single episode before passing judgment on Limbaugh’s show.

I did as Meyers suggested — and concluded after a week of watching Rush’s rants that he was worse than I imagined.

I wrote in a column, after subjecting myself to the ordeal, that Limbaugh was to political commentary what Willard Scott was to weather forecasting. Neither man really knew anything about the subjects with which they dealt. “Willard Scott makes me laugh,” I wrote at the time, “Rush Limbaugh makes me sick.”

Fox News is a major player these days in the on-going American political drama. Drum concludes:

“Yes, the tea party has won. But it won because of support from Fox News. In reality, it’s Fox News that won. And for all that Fox gets a lot of attention, I still wonder how many non-conservatives really watch it. Not just the occasional clip on Jon Stewart or Media Matters that’s good for a laugh or an eye roll. How many really sit down occasionally and take in a full evening? Or a whole day? Because that’s the only way you’ll really understand.”

Yep. I do understand.

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