military news

Honor Flight awaits

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My phone rang Saturday morning and for a moment I tjhought it might be spam call. Oh … it damn sure wasn’t anything of the sort.

A lady from Dallas was calling to inform me that I had been chosen to join a group of 40 to 45 fellow veterans on a whirlwind trip to Washington, D.C. The trip will occur the morning of Sept. 11 and we’ll return to Love Field the next evening.

It’s an Honor Flight, established years ago to salute those who have worn the uniform of the nation.

Now … every person I’ve ever know who has taken one of these trips cannot speak kindly enough about the treatment they receive. They carry nothing. They have “guardians” who accompany them to ensure their needs and desires are satisfied. The plan, as I understand it, is for us to visit as many of the pertinent memorials and monuments on the D.C. Mall during our time in the nation’s capital.

I also understand that we will be applauded, offered congratulations and many thanks from those are present to see what’s going on. I’ll be candid here: I do not yet know how I intend to react to such royal treatment.

There will be veterans who have served in all the nation’s conflicts dating to World War II. I suspect there will be few among our group who served in WWII, or in Korea for that matter, given that the Korean War started just five years after the end of the the Second World War. I hope there will be plenty of us who served in Vietnam who will take this trip. We will have much to share among ourselves about our experience during that troubling era. Desert Storm, Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans also will be present.

This kind of fanfare marks a remarkable about-face for a nation that once scorned those of us who came home from Vietnam. To be clear, I was never spat upon or called a filthy name. However, I am aware of how too many Americans blamed military personnel simply for following lawful orders.

Well, that’s all changed. I am going to take part in an Honor Flight. It’s a new day in America and I look forward to enjoying it.

local news

City manager search: so far, so good

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I am ready to proclaim my cautious optimism in Princeton’s search for a new city manager to take the reins of a government that, to my eyes, appears to be flailing.

The City Council appears ready to hire a search firm with some serious credential to lead the search effort. Compared to to slap-dash, and frankly underhanded, method that brought us the previous city manager, it looks as though the city has awakened to smell the coffee.

The council has stated it likes the way CPS HR Consulting has presented itself. It will hire the firm, founded in 1985, to bring candidates to Princeton. And get this: Council members will interview the finalists, actually meet them prior to decided whom to choose as the next city manager. The most recent city manager, Mike Mashburn, emerged from the shadows in January 2024. He met the City Council for the very first time in an executive session of the council, which then hired him unanimously on the spot and decided on a healthy salary package.

Mashburn last a little less than two years on the job. I haven’t read a single detail of the terms of his sudden resignation, but my trick knee tells me he was asked to leave the building immediately. Why? Well, I guess he wasn’t working out.

Then the city brought in a fellow, Jeff Jones, to run City Hall in the interim. Then he quit suddenly just recently. Again, no details have been forthcoming. The city is being run by Jim Waters, the current interim manager who happens to be the city’s chief of police.

Now we have a new mayor, Eugene Escobar Jr., has vowed a transparent search. His mayoral predecessor, Brianna Chacon, made the same vow when embarking on the search that brought Mashburn to Princeton, but didn’t deliver on that pledge.

CPS HR Consulting can claim success in finding city managers.

Let us hope its success rate is bolstered by a selection for Princeton. This city has moved rapidly beyond the one-street-light burg it used to be. It’s now a city in high demand by new residents. It needs a strong hand to take the reins of the city administration. Just keep it in the open.

Donald Trump, national news

Pay attention to what matters … Donald

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This has been clear ever since Donald Trump took the presidential oath on his first tour of the White House … the dude has too much serious work to consider, which is why he wastes so much time lampooning TV comics, critics of assorted importance and all the little things he ought to let slide.

Barack Obama said it well recently when asked about Trump’s fixation with him, a predecessor in the White House. If Trump were seriously committed to working for us, President Obama said, he would have zero time to fire off social media messages at 2 in the morning. TV comic Stephen Colbert noted as well that “We’re just clowns.” Trump should spend a minute of his time wondering about the fate of comedians or what they’re saing about him.

Trump has exhibited zero interest or inclination to concern him with policy details or the effects of decisions he makes from the Oval Office. His unfitness for public service is on display ever waking hour of every single day.

He tears down the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom; he decks out the Oval Office in gold ornaments; he drains the DC Mall reflecting pool in what is turning into the boondoggle of the year; he slaps his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in a disgraceful display of disrespect for a slain president.

The man is an idiot. Pure and simple.

national news

Hoping to hear truth behind what we received

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I am hoping the day will arrive — and that I’ll be alive to watch its arrival — when we will understand how American voters got suckered twice into electing a known fraud, con man and imposter to the nation’s highest office.

To be honest, I am still in a fog over that one. We once demanded the very best among us to serve in the presidency. With Donald John Trump we have gotten the worst among us.

What makes this case even more maddening is that Trump forewarned us himself about what we would get if we elected him. He once declared in the open that he would be the “retribution” of those who believe they have been done wrong. Boy howdy, has this clown delivered the goods on that one.

There were plenty of high-powered individuals who had told us to be wary of what we were swallowing. Mitt Romney, the Republicans’ 2012 presidential nominee, called Trump a “phony, a fraud,” and spelled out in excruciating detail evidence he had to make such a claim. Our collective response was to push it all aside. Many MAGA faithful called Romney guilty of spitting sour grapes. Well, Mitt was spot on!

A POTUS who should have more important matters to occupy his time instead vents on a reflecting pool, bitches about the removal of his name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and continues to denigrate the records of his immediate predecessors … namely Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

This is what he told us we would get if we elected him to the White House? Yep. It damn sure is!

Shame on American voters for guzzling this swill.

International news

We saw this coming long ago

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Watching Donald Trump fumble, bumble and blunder his way through a second term in the White House admittedly has become quite a painful spectacle to watch.

To be brutally frank, though, many of us saw it coming long ago, long before he ever took the oath of office for his first term as the head of the nation’s exeutive branch of government.

I feel the need to remind readers of this blog that I declared long before he took the oath that Trump had spent his entire professional life pursuing personal wealth, aggrandizement and never once devoted a single moment of his waking hours to serving the public. Here we are today as Trump’s personal wealth is expanding before our eyes with sweetheart deals with foreign governments.

He is fighting now openly with Republican senators. He is ignoring his Cabinet officials’ best advice, although admittedly it is quite scarce with the crowd he has assembled around him for the second term. Fellow heads of state are laughing out loud at Trump’s pronouncements.

Then he went to war with Iran and is trying to hammer out a deal that strengthens the nation he hates and puts the United States in a weaker position with regard to Iran.

This is “winning”? It makes me laugh. Loudly.

military news, national news, national security

Well … at least this war won’t last forever

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I am going to give Donald Trump a shot-glass full of credit for the war with Iran — that he started — but which is about to come to an inglorious end.

The war that Trump began was thought to be a “forever war,” which he said during the 2024 campaign he would avoid. It’s coming to an end, but with Trump getting virtually nothing from the Iranians.

I am delighted to see progress moving clumsily forward on a peace deal with Iran. We lost 13 American service personnel’s lives. Thousands of Iranians died during the course of our bombing and missile strikes and I am sorry about that terrible loss of life. The war, though, appears to nearly over.

The Strait of Hormuz will reopen soon, one hopes. But get a load of this: The Iranians will be able to sell their oil on the open market, earning billions of dollars to shore up their shattered economy. The sides are arguing over an inspection protocol designed to ensure that Iran keeps its promise to not seek to develop a nuclear bomb.

Trump called the deal hammered out over years of negotiation to deny Iran a nuclear arsenal the “worst in history.” He tore it up upon taking office in January 2017. The only problem with that deal — in Trump’s view — was that it had President Obama’s name on it, along with Secretary of State John Kerry. But here we are, nine years later, and we’re back to where we began with an arrangement that looks a great deal like the one that Kerry and the president hammered out with out allies in the region.

Trump wanted regime change in Iran. He didn’t get it, although he is able to boast about killing the ayatollah in an airstrike during the first week of the war.

All the while, we hear from Trump about that moronic idea of dying the DC Mall Reflecting Pool blue to commemorate the nation’s 250th birthday; we watch the JFK Center for the Performing Arts take down Trump’s name from the edifice and Trump launching into this idiotic wee-hour social media rants about Cabinet officials and Democrats seeking to undermine him.

This isn’t anyone’s definition of “winning,” Mr. POTUS.

At least the war he started, though, is about to end. I would offer a wish that we could get down to actual governing … but I know that’s an impossible task.

local news

Sharing a bit of cheer

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The world appears to be splitting at the seams, yes? A U.S. president keeps reaching beyond his grasp for more power than he deserves … or is entitled. There’s more crap to ponder.

With all that laid out there, I want to share with y’all a bit of personal good news. Perhaps you can relate. Here goes.

A few months ago I took a spill in my garage as I was exiting my pickup truck. My feet got tangled up and I fell on my left smack onto the concrete slab on the garage floor. My knee has been hurting ever since. I made an appointment with a radiologist recently and the doc determined I had a torn meniscus tendon in my left knee.

My friends and family have been watching me gimp around for a while now. Occasionally I can be seen with a cane to relieve pressure on my bad knee.

All that changed about 2 p.m. today. I visited an orthopedist in Plano. He took a picture of my knee and confirmed what I knew. “You have a torn meniscus,” he said … then came the magic words. He said he could give me instant relief with a shot in my knee.

So … he did. The shot contained a cocktail of drugs, one of which was a steroid. He injected the stuff into my knee.

Then came “presto!” The pain vanished. It was instantaneous.

I am able to proclaim that as a result I have full motion in my injured knee. I have no pain. I am able to walk at more than a snail’s pace. When someone asks me “How you doing?” I can answer with something a good bit more than “Just OK.”

This message is aimed at others who have experienced similar aches and pains. I know you’re out there.

My lesson to those who care about such things? Don’t ever give up. I might just try to chase my puppies around my yard.

Uncategorized

Talarico making more sense

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The more I hear from James Talarico, the more appealing he sounds as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Texas.

Here is why. Talarico is a young Presbyterian seminary student who (a) wears his faith openly and expressses it freely and (b) is taking aim at Christian nationalists who are seeking to pervert the U.S. Constitution into something the nation’s founders expressly forbid … which was to make religion a part of our governing structure.

Talarico hails from Austin. He is running for the Senate against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s lugging so much legal and ethical baggage into this race I am surprised he is able to catch his breath long enough to make any sort of logical statement.

Talarico doesn’t fit the norm of modern Texas Democrats. He speaks openly of his Christian faith. He cites Scripture at campaign rallies and has opened his campaign with the slogan that it is time to “flip a few tables,” referring to the Biblical reference of Jesus being so angry he tossed tables to get his disciples’ attention.

Right-wing evangelicals are critical of Talarico, suggesting he is perverting Christianity to fit neatly into his political message. They believe the founders intended to create a Christian nation and want the current government to reflect those founding ideals.

I have chosen to take a different view, for if the founders wanted  Christian theology to take root after the Revolution, they would have written it into the Constitution. The nation’s government document is quite clear that it is a secular framework. There isn’t a single mention of Jesus Christ, the New Testament or Christianity to be found in it. In fact, the First Amendment to the Constitution declares that Congress shall make no laws establishing a state religion.

These are the things that James Talarico will seek to make clear to Texas voters. I am going to wish him all the success in the world as he carries out that mission.

Sports news

FIFA World Cup? Not for me

We”re a couple of weeks now into the World Cup matches spread across the United States of America and try as I might, I have to admit that I cannot join the rest of the world in embracing this activity.

Soccer just isn’t my bag, man. Full stop.

Before you accuse me of being provincialist, or of resisting a worldwide phenomenon, just understand that I am approaching my 77th birthday. I am long in the tooth and I understand fully the saying about how hard it is to change one’s habits and desires at an advanced age. So, there you go.

I remain a dedicated baseball fan, although even that has been trying for this old guy who just doesn’t quite grasp the kind of money these athletes make. I remember when icons like Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron all thought they had died and gone to heaven when they were offered contracts that reached $100,000 for a season. The same can be said for professional basketball and football athletes.

They went through a lot to get AT&T Stadium in Arlington, home for the Cowboys of the NFL, ready to play host to the World Cup matches. They had to remove artificial turn that covers the ground and replace it with grass, they had to remove all the corporate logos and teams have to rely solely on national pride to lift them to victory.

I have one earlier experience with the World Cup. In 2006, my bride and I were in Copenhagen, Denmark to attend a conference. We looked for dinner one night with some friends from Amarillo. That night we walked for blocks and blocks looking for a place to eat. The problem was that Denmark was playing Germany in a World Cup match and every eatery and watering hole was packed with soccer fans cheering themselves hoarse. The Danes and Germans simply adore their national soccer teams. That’s their call.

It’s not mine.

national news

Emoluments clause? Pfffttt!

I thought I understood much of what the Constitution allows and prohibits. One of the things the nation’s governing document disallows is the president accepting gifts from foreign governments while in office.

It’s called the “emoluments clause” and is as unambiguous as anything in the nation’s governing document.

So, I am forced to wonder aloud: How does Donald Trump get away with accepting a $400 million jetliner that he will keep grounded until he finishes work on his presidential library?

Trumpkins say he won’t actually use the aircraft while he’s in office. Therefore, the aircraft doesn’t fall under the emoluments clause prohibition … they say. Well, such “logic” is pure crap. Trump accepted the gift while serving as POTUS. Thus, in my view he has violated the clause without question.

Trump denies any wrongdoing. Qatar officials who gave him the aircraft were thanking him for standing strong in the Middle East against terrorists and terrorism. But dammit! — they still gave him the gift. The Constitution says he cannot accept it.

How in the name of constitutional clarity does this clown get away with this?

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