science news

Artemis II impact was greater than I thought

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Well, kids, it appears that the Artemis II mission to the moon and back had a greater impact on me than I thought it would have.

I could have done a lot of things today. The weather is warm and breezy. I could have spent the day outside working on my yard. Instead, I parked in front of the TV and watched two Netflix documentaries on the Apollo space program. One dealt with the Apollo 11 mission that put human beings on the moon’s surface for the first time. The other dealt with the Apollo 13 mission that brought home three astronauts in a high-stakes deep space rescue mission.

Yes, the Artemis II mission has invigorated my interest in recent history. It returned me to the days when I would await launches with my Mom, counting down until lift-off. Mom is gone now. I, of course, am now an old man … but damn, this stuff gets my heart beating rapidly.

And to reiterate what I’ve said already on this blog, I tend to allow my sappiness to show itself when I cry at signature moments while watching documentaries I have seen dozens of times already. It happened today when Neil Armstrong informed the world, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” And again, when the Apollo 13 chutes deployed and the astronauts splashed down safely in the ocean.

There truly are heroes still left in this world. Today’s binge-watching reminded me of what I have known all along.

Oh, and FYI … I did mow my front lawn.

local news

Rep. Self … talk to us!

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The gentleman who represents me in Congress is at once frustrating and quite capable.

The capability comes from his political experience as Collin County judge before making the move to D.C. The frustration comes from his relative silence related to the conduct of Donald J. Trump.

Trump’s cowardice during the Vietnam War has surfaced again as a talking point, given the war of choice he launched against Iran. Trump evaded induction into the armed forces, citing those infamous bone spurs. Yet he is so willing to send your young men and women into harm’s way for reasons that rtemain a mystery to most Americans.

One of the members of Congress who continues to stand with Trump is Self, a decorated Army Ranger, a combat officer. I believe Rep. Self is an honorable man, and I applaud his service in the Army. However, why in the world did he remain silent when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth angrily chastised six congressional Democrats for remaining members of the military that they are obligated to refuse to obey unlawful orders.

Democrats raised holy hell over Hegseth’s tirade. Republicans stayed silent. One of the silent GOP members is Keith Self, a 20-year military retiree who knows an unlawful order when he sees it and knows how to act when he is issued one.

Keith Self remains a dedicated Trumpkin. I won’t change his mind on that matter. But for the life of me, I don’t understand how he can remain silent while the commander in chief exhibits profound ignorance of the Constitution he took an oath to defend.

national news

We will survive this crisis

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Barack H. Obama is being hailed in many quarters these days as a wise man, a title he was largedly denied while he served for two mostly successful terms as president of the United States.

But here he is today, being hailed by progressives as standing among the greatest of the 47 men who have held the high office. Forgive me, but I believe some folks are getting ahead of themselves. History isn’t done drafting how Obama will stand among the Americans who have served as president.

He did, though, offer a bit of wisdom to Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of the man he succeeded as president. Hager interviewed Obama on the current crisis that threatens to engulf our political system. Obama said, simply, that we have been through many crises already and have managed “to come out of them better” and stronger.

I intend to cling tightly to that view. I believe that’s the case.

We fought a civil war that killed about 600,000 Americans. We have fought two world wars against tyrants who sought control of the planet through the use of force. We have survived a great depression that saw fortunes vanish in an instant, where the once-wealthy were left with nothing on Earth. Three presidents have been impeached. A fourth president resigned from office to avoid a fourth impeachment. Americans have marched in the streets to protest war, economic policy and any assortment of decisions made on high.

We have at this moment a tinhorn charlatan, a fraud, a con man seeking to corrupt the system of government beyond anything we recognize. And now many Amerians are worried that he no longer has the mental capacity to make rational decisions.

Are we going to fall apart and crumble? No! The founders must have expected some form of what is takiing place, and crafted a Constitution built to withstand the pressure it is feeling.

The founders knew what they were building. I believe, as does President Obama, that we’re going to survive.

national news

Clearing the air on Trump

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Donald Trump is the least fit man ever to occupy the office of president of the United States.

There, I have just repeated a mantra I have been declaring on this blog since the moment it became clear that Trump was considering a run for the nation’s highest elected office.

However, I now am going to state what hasn’t been repeated … which is that I and many other critics take no joy in blasting the POTUS over the way he has conducted himself. I now will clear the air.

When President Bush invited all the living former POTUSes to the White House to honor his successor, President-elect Barack Obama, he did so with grace and dignity. Bush turned to Obama and said that despite deep political differences, he wanted Obama to succeed. He wished him well, as did all the former presidents.

This is worth mentioning because of the criticism that has been tossed at the Trump foes over the course of his time as POTUS. These “never Trumpers” don’t “hate America.” They don’t want the nation to fail. They don’t seek to destroy this nation’s standing as the lone military superpower.

They don’t criticize Trump with gleams in their eyes and warm feelings in their tummies.

They are angry with Trump. They dislike the nation denigrating itself by allowing the president to make a fool of himself on the world stage. They understand that when the president criticizes our allies, or salutes dictators for their strength he is speaking ostensibly on behalf of 300-plus million Americans. This pluralistic society of ours cannot stand in synchronized lockstep with a man who states his desire to wipe a nation off the face of the Earth … which is what Trump has done with Iran.

No one with an ounce of conscience should support such a notion. I possess more than an ounce of it, so I am adamantly opposed to the idea of wiping a civilization off the planet.

I oppose Trump not because I detest him personally. I do so because I love my country. I want us to succeed. I actually want Trump to succeed. However, it is abundantly clear that POTUS 47 lacks the thread of compassion to do the right thing for the nation he was chosen to lead.

I take no joy in acknowledging that truth.

religious news

Faux Christianity on full display

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For those who might not recall, I want to declare that I — and many others — have been saying for years that Donald Trump’s appeal among Christians was built on a mountain of lies.

He appealed to evangelicals among his MAGA cabal by supporting them in their spiritual journey. It all broke down the moment he was forced to speak specifically about a passage from Scripture he found particularly moving or profound.

He failed. Every single time. There was that hilarious statement prior to the 2016 election in which Trump referred to “Two Timothy,” which is a description no one uses when referencing the New Testament book. Then he held the Bible upside down in front of a church marquee.

He once declared he never has sought forgiveness from God.

Now comes the latest barrage of bizarre non-starters. He chided Pope Leo IXV for being “soft on crime” because the pontiff opposes the Iran war. He said he’s “not a fan” of the pope, in a statement that sort of equates the vicar of God to the world’s Catholic population to a secular political pundit.

After a series of blog posts I published, a member of my family came down hard on me for criticizing Trump’s admission that he has groped women in their private areas. That’s quite un-Christian of him, I said. My critic said that Christianity endorses second chances, that Trump merely deserves the chance to make good on his sordid past.

The deal breaker, though, might be the post of Trump portraying himself as Jesus Christ. He is cast in holy glow, wearing a Christ-like robe while tending to someone lying down. “Yes, I posted it,” Trump said, but added that he was portraying himself as a doctor. Wow! Did you see any sign of scrubs, or a stethoscope? Neither did I.

Trump’s flirtation with religion has been so plainly over-cooked that it boggles my mind that anyone can take anything this idiot says seriously.

And, yes … there is a glimmer of good news in all of this. Many of the MAGA faithful are finally seeing through the charlatan.

local news

Mac comes back for some keen memories

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William McLellan Thornberry came home the other day to be honored by Texas Tech University as its 2026 Alumnus of the Year.

It was an honor well-received and richly earned.

Allow me now to dispense with the use of his given name. I want to refer to him as Mac. Yes, Mac Thornberry was my congressman for virtually the entire time my bride and I lived in the Texas Panhandle.

I agreed rarely with his politics. Or his views on public policy. Or with his occasional disdain for members of the “other” party on Capitol Hill. However, Mac Thornberry, a dedicated Republican through and through, did his work with class, with decorum, with dignity and with the sense that he knew from where he came.

Mac was a gentleman. He grew up in Donley County just east of Amarillo. He worked his parents’ ranch. He learned the value of hard work, of getting dirt under his fingernails. He served in Congress with none of the bellicose bluster we hear too often from the guy who succeeded him.

Mac Thornberry and I kinda grew up together. He’s a lot younger than I am, but we started our new Panhandle jobs in the same week in January 1995. He was elected to the U.S. House in the Contract With America election in 1994. I started my jog as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News. He read me pretty well. He knew my personal politics veered from his conservative views, even though the paper’s editorial policy remained faithful to the right-wing views for which it had established over the course of many decades.

However, I always liked Mac Thornberry as a person. He was charming in a West Texas, humble sort of way. I don’t recall ever telling him directly that I developed a deep respsect for the quality of man he showed himself to be. Maybe if he reads this blog post, he’ll see it for himself.

Given the open hatred and hostility we hear from those in power in D.C., there is not a hint of doubt that for my money, we could use more like Mac Thornerry in D.C. than we have serving there these days.

 

national news

Waiting for ‘restoration’

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Joe Biden’s presidency is going to be measured favorably, I believe, by those who earn a living making such judgments. President Biden’s single term likely won’t be held up against the likes of those who won re-election, but a single word does come to mind when I ponder Biden’s tenure in the Oval Office.

The term is “restorative.” Biden was able during his four years in office to restore much of what we came to expect in our head of state, head of government and commander in chief. Biden respects and honors the trappings of the office. He inherited an office in 2021 that had been all but ruined by the term of Donald J. Trump.

I want another restorative presidency to take hold in the 2028 election. Trump will be gone … thankfully.

One of the key tasks of the next president will be to return the decorum and dignity that the U.S. presidency deserves. Such a restoration can come from any one of the individuals in both parties who will seek the office in a couple of years. It might be that Joe Biden, elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, is the godfather of D.C. decorum. He has been at or near the center of power for more than five decades.

The good news of the 2028 election includes he guarantee that Donald Trump will be gone. The bad news will be that the MAGA movement he created will take some to disappear. I sense along with others that the MAGA cabal is beginning to fall apart. I have noted on this blog many times that America doesn’t need to be “made great again.” The U.S. of A. has been great all along.

May the next president of the United States restore the dignity Americans deserve in their highest elected office. And may the next president represent the very best of us, not the worst of us.

national news

GOP silence speaks volumes

Republicans’ stone-cold silence in response to Donald Trump’s lies continues to boggle my noggin … such as what he said the other day about the potential end to the Iran war.

You cannot make this stuff up!

He started the war with Iran. Trump is now working to end it. If he succeeds and the Iranians stop firing back at us and Israel, he’ll take credit for ending that war. Yes? Of course he will!

But then he said the other day that no previous president in U.S. history has ended a war. He has ended eight of ’em, or so he said. Hold on a second, Mr. Ignoramus in Chief.

In 1941, we were drawn into World War II when the Japanese bombed our fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. President Roosevelt asked Congress the next day to declare war against Japan, which it did. Then the Nazi Germans declared war on us and we responded by declaring war on them.

Nearly four years later, FDR died of a stroke, up stepped Vice President Harry Truman to take over as commander in chief. On May 7, 1945, President Truman accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender. WWII in Europe ended … on Truman’s watch. Give ’em Hell Harry wasn’t done. We dropped two A-bombs on Japan in August 1945. The Japanese surrendered on Aug. 14 and on Sept. 2, 1945, Japanese military leaders signed the surrender documents aboard the battleship U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

I learned of that historical sequence when I was a little boy.

He keeps blathering about his “landslide” election as POTUS; it was nothing of the sort. How he won more Electoral College votes than any POTUS since President Reagan; another provable lie.

And through all of this, the Republican conference in Congress sits silently on its hands, saying nothing to correct the record.

These GOP officials disgrace themselves, the government they are elected to run and the once-great political party they supposedly represent.

Uncategorized

Bulls, bears … what now?

When the POTUS launched that foolish war with Iran, the world found itself turned on its head.

Wall Street retreated immediately from its “bull market” status to becoming a “bear market.” The price of oil skyrocketed into the heavens, bringing the price of gasoline and diesel fuel right along with it.

Then Donald Trump began backing off some of the dire and grim threats he laid on Iran. The impact of that backing away was to watch the market storm back.

It prompts a question. Wall Street had been in bull market territory. Then it became a bear market. The NASDAQ and S&P 500 retreated so dramatically that market analysts said those markets had marched into “correction” territory.

Now the NASDAQ and S&P have marched into record high territory. So has the Dow Jones Industrial average.

What do we call a market that plunges into a bear market then storms back into a bull market?

This nuttier than hell political climate is doing a number on the business climate.

Uncategorized

‘Weaponization’ resumes

FBI Director Kash Patel lacks the gene that compels him to ponder the hypocrisy of his actions and statements.

Why else would he choose to launch a criminal probe into former CIA Director John Brennan’s actions relating to the first impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019?

The same can be said of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who’s going after many top officials who got swept up in Trump’s first impeachment.

These two people are doing precisely what they have accused the Biden administration of doing … and wrongly, I should add. They are using national security assets to seek revenge against Donald Trump’s foes and they have said all along that President Biden did the same thing to Trump’s foes. There stands no greater example of weaponizing the Justice Department than what we’re seeing unfold in real time.

It is striking in the extreme to realize how Trump has surrounded himself with hypocrites. Indeed, they are mirror images of the POTUS himself.

He wanted loyalty among his top advisors, the “best people”? He got loyalty, all right. The cost to our cherished American system is horrific.

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