The good things Trump has done for America

Here are some excerpts from a superb column by Maureen Dowd that appeared in Saturday’s New York Times.

"Donald Trump has indeed already made some of America Great Again.

"Just not the aspects he intended.

"He has breathed new zest into a wide range of things: feminism, liberalism, student activism, newspapers, cable news, protesters, bartenders, shrinks, Twitter, the A.C.L.U., ‘S.N.L.,’ town halls, George Orwell, Margaret Atwood, Hannah Arendt, Stephen Colbert, Nordstrom, the Federalist Papers, separation of powers, division of church and state, athletes and coaches taking political stands and Frederick Douglass.

"As Trump blusters about repealing Obamacare, many Americans have come to appreciate the benefits of the law more.

"Trump may even have pierced the millennial malaise, as we see more millennials showing interest in running for office.

"Every time our daft new president tweets about the ‘failing’ New York Times, our digital subscriptions and stock price jump, driven by readers eager for help negotiating the disorienting Trumpeana Oceana Upside Down dimension rife with gaslighting, trolling, leaking, lying and conflicts.

"Similarly, whenever Trump rants about Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of him and tweets that Saturday Night Live’ is not funny,’ always a complete hit job’ and really bad television!,’ the show’s ratings go up. They’re now at a 20-year high.

"Ordinarily staid Senate hearings for cabinet choices are now destination TV. As Trump puts forth people who want to plant Acme dynamite in the agencies they will head and as Republicans at the federal and state levels push their conservative agenda, Americans have a refreshed vigor for debating what’s at stake for the environment, education, civil rights and health insurance — and a new taste for passionate, cacophonous town halls.

"Trump has made facts great again. By distorting reality so relentlessly, he has put everyone on alert for alternative facts.

"The pink pussyhats are at the barricades, on the watch for any curtailment of women’s rights and any mansplaining by older white Southern men."

Like I said. There are just excerpts from her column. You can read the entire column here.

Who teaches these people how to write

I had to read this sentence at least a half dozen times before I finally came to grips with it, but I’m still not positive that I am completely understanding it. It’s from a column that appeared in today’s Austin American-Statesman by sports commentator Cedric Golden. The column concerned the upcoming Big 12 Conference meetings and I don’t need to go into any more detail than that to highlight this particular sentence Golden crafted about the University of Kansas’ basketball programs:

"The Jayhawks have won three national titles,16 regular season and 10 Big 12 tournament titles, including a current streak of 12 straight."

How, I kept asking myself, could Kansas have won the last 12 straight tournament titles when, according to Golden, they had only won 10 overall? Finally, after reading that sentence over and over and over again and tossing it around in my mind, I somewhat hesitantly have come to the conclusion the "12 straight" refers to the regular season titles, even though the structure of that sentence contradicts that thought.

I’m guessing the Statesman also gives sports copy editors the day off on Sundays because, otherwise, hopefully, someone on the sports desk would have caught and corrected this sentence.

Maybe Austin’s dearth of competent sports writers is because the capital city doesn’t have one of the Big 4 professional sports teams. I also realize I’m going to be spoiled because I began my professional journalism career working on the same newspaper as the great Red Smith and later wound up working on the same publication as the immortal Blackie Sherrod. But still, Austin does have the University of Texas and even though it’s athletic standing ain’t what it used to be, you would think we could do better than this.

There’s something (mathematically) screwy about this sentence

From an article on Page 1B of today’s Austin American Statesman involving the cold front that hit the area:

"The National Weather Service says stiff winds will be coming from the north, too, which should make for tricky driving east or west, fully 50 percent of the directions Central Texas motorists drive."  

Which way to die: smoking or trying to quit?

Have you seen that commercial for Chantix, the wonder drug that is supposed to get its users to quit smoking? Like all the other commercials for pharmaceuticals that require a doctor’s prescription, this ad lists all the various possible side effects. The ones for Chantix, I kid you not, may include "drastic change in behavior, suicidal thoughts or actions … "

Suicidal thoughts or actions?

I get the thoughts part. People who swear off cigs may be so nicotine deprived they could think that a better alternative would be to off oneself? But "actions"??? I read that as saying some folks who have taken these pills have bought the big one, have actually committed suicide — or, at the very least, have given suicide a damn good try.

Here’s a possible sales slogan for Chantix: "If smoking doesn’t kill you, than using Chantix to quit just might do the trick."
 

Here's a good car commercial

C’mon “D”

So I was in the neighborhood pharmacy this evening to pick up a prescription and right there on the counter is a magazine rack filled with (I’m guessing) the current issue of D magazine. And it’s cover story is "The 100 Best Restaurants in Dallas."

Naturally, curiosity got the best of me so I immediately picked up a copy (there was a another customer head of me in the pharmacy line) to see what eatery was No. 1.

I’m not going to spoil the surprise and tell you what’s at the top of D’s list. What I am going to tell you is the mag’s pick for the No. 1 restaurant in Dallas is not even in Dallas.

Go figure.

Where have all the editors gone?

Headline seen in Monday’s Dallas Morning News:

"Man accused of strangling mother to death"

Honestly! There it is for all to see on Page 4B of Monday’s Metro section. What’s going on at that newspaper? Have all the editors and proofreaders been forced to take early retirement? Somewhere, former managing editor Terry Walsh is having a fit.

Floyd falls for Griggs’ gimmick

For those of you not following this little slice of local intrigue, let me set the stage for you. Seemingly out of nowhere, Dallas City Councilman Scott Griggs announces he is going to introduce a resolution putting the council on record as supporting marriage equality. Not only that, but he says he has the votes to pass it.

The gullible Jacquielynn Floyd

Mike Rawlings, the mayor of our fair city, a well-intentioned, somewhat intelligent (two attributes not usually associated with our mayors of late) chap, says, while he’s all for marriage equality, the resolution is a complete waste of time, has nothing to do with city business and should not even be debated. Rawlings knows a ploy when he smells one.

Dallas Morning News columnist Jacquielynn Floyd, on the other hand, is not that clever. Perhaps she only sees things at face value.

In a column that began on the front page of the paper’s Metro section Friday, Floyd wrote that the mayor "is missing an opportunity to lend his moral weight to an issue that affects an awful lot of people in this community," as if Griggs’s resolution really had anything whatsoever to do with marriage equality.

No, what the mayor is missing an opportunity to do is to play Griggs’ dupe, something which Floyd had no problem succumbing to, proving it by devoting the rest of her column about how there’s this cultural shift taking place in America on the issue of marriage equality.

Wake up, Floyd! Griggs’ resolution is not about marriage equality, it’s about winning re-election in a neck-and-neck race against fellow council member Delia Jasso. Do you think it’s just a coincidence Griggs wants this resolution to come before the council in its last meeting before this month’s election? Griggs is mining for votes any way he can and this is nothing more than a blatant attempt to secure the gay vote in the district. And, if you look closely at the neighborhoods in the redrawn district, you’re going to find some with significant gay populations.

I’ll give Floyd 1,000-to-1 odds, Griggs wouldn’t even bother with this ploy after the election.

Rawlings knows exactly what’s going on here, but he’s too diplomatic to accuse Griggs of pandering, which he is guilty of. Instead the mayor says this is not an issue for the city council to debate, just like condemning Syria for possibly using chemical weapons is not an issue for the Dallas City Council to debate.

However, if Griggs happened to discover a large number of voting age Syrians in his district, no telling what he’d do.

And Floyd would probably go "Yeah, let’s get behind that. There’s a huge cultural shift taking place in today’s society concerning Syria’s possible use of chemical weapons."

Give me a break.

Coal: the most trusted name in coal

I resurrect this wonderful commercial not only because it deserves another look but also to remind viewers it was written and directed by the Coen Brothers, proving (1) not all their best work is on the big screen and (2) they have wicked sense of humor I wish they would employ more often.

Morning News’s college sports coverage is a disgrace

Too often I get confused reading the sports pages of the Dallas Morning News these days because, if I didn’t know better, I would think I was reading the Bryan Eagle.

For some unknown reason, the idiots running the sports department at the News have assigned a writer (Kate Hairopoulos) to cover Texas A&M sports full time, while the local college team — a team incidentally coached by a basketball legend — is, for all practical purposes ignored.

I can’t remember the last time I picked up a copy of the News when it didn’t run the Southeast Conference basketball standings. Why? The only school in that conference is almost 200 miles outside of Dallas. Yet, try to find an instance when the paper ran the Conference USA standings.

If you’re a regular reader of the Morning News sports section, you probably have no idea what Conference USA is. That’s the conference that SMU plays in. If you’re a regular reader of the Morning News sports section, you probably have no idea what SMU is. That’s a Dallas based university whose basketball team is coached by one Larry Brown, the only basketball coach in history to coach a team to an NCAA championship (at Kansas in 1988) and an NBA championship (the Detroit Pistons in 2004).

Next year SMU will play in what was the Big East Conference, which has a far stronger basketball legacy than the SEC.

Take a look at today’s paper as an example. On Page 8C, the page the News set aside as its college basketball page, Hairopoulos’ story on an absolutely meaningless game between A&M and LSU is spread across all six columns at the top of the page. Presumably, the paper picked up the tab to send her to College Station. Meanwhile, the non-staff written SMU game story (courtesy of the Associated Press) — the school’s final game of the season — begins two lines from the bottom of the page. True, Tulsa, where SMU played, is 50 miles farther from Dallas, than College Station, but that would not have stopped a legitimate sports editor of a Dallas daily from placing a higher coverage priority on SMU-Tulsa than A&M-LSU.

Earlier this season, I attended SMU’s game with Memphis, the only Conference USA team to be in the nation’s Top 25 this season. That game was never even mentioned in the sports pages of the Morning News. Not an "advance" story before the game — played right here in Dallas, for crying out loud — or a game story the next day.

In this day of the Internet and 24-hour cable news and sports, there’s only reason for a newspaper to exist: To cover local news. The News sports department does an admirable job covering the local professional sports teams. It’s way past time to devote that same attention to the local college sports teams.

I absolutely love this

It caught me completely by surprise.

Observer's landfill coverage is nothing but garbage

When Robert Wilonsky left the Dallas Observer, I quickly discovered reading the weekly newspaper’s blog, Unfair Park, was a complete waste of my valuable time. Conversely, I have found a lot more value in the blogs Wilonsky contributes to at the Dallas Morning News.

Every once in a while, however, I’ll pick up the printed version of the paper to read Jim Schutze’s column, the pieces on dining and restaurants and to learn what acts are playing at what clubs. But then I’ll read an entry reprinted from Unfair Park and just have to shake my head over how bad the reporting has become at the Observer.

A visual representation of
the Dallas Observer's reporting

For example, in its piece about the landfill audit performed by the Dallas City Auditor, the misinformed writer, Eric Nicholson, just comes and says, without any attribution, "The upshot (of the audit) was that the city had lost a garbage truck full of potential revenue over the past decade, a total of $1.1 million." That’s just flat wrong. The only person in any way connected with the city who has said anything like that is Scott Griggs, the arrogant jerk of a city councilman who thinks he knows-it-all, but never, EVER, does.

What the audit actually reported was, because of systems that were in place, there was the remote possibility that as much as $100,000 a year was lost. There was also the remote possibility that the landfill actually took in more revenue than it earned, but I seriously doubt that happened. However, that possibility also exists.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s accept the very probable false premise that the city did lose $100,000 out of a total revenue of $28 million each year. That comes to a loss of 0.36 percent of the landfill's total income. Look, I work in retail and I will guarantee you Wal-Mart would absolutely love to have a shrinkage rate of 0.36 percent/per store after each inventory. Sam Walton would be turning cartwheels in his grave.

But I guess it’s too much to ask the media to put things in their proper perspect perspective. It shouldn’t be, however.

Landfill audit: This emperor has no clothes and no guts

I am going to step up and say the two words to the Dallas City Auditor that others have either been afraid to say or, in the case of the media, simply too lazy to say: "Prove it." Prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the city has lost more than $1 million dollars because of the way fees are collected at McCommas Bluff.

And you know what? The auditor can’t prove it. He has a hunch, but he has no solid evidence. Yet the reputations of outstanding city officials are being tarnished because a worthless, gutless assistant city manager and the lazy reporters and editorial writers for the Dallas Morning News refuse to stand up to the auditor and say "Prove it."

I have an assistant city manager, some reporters
 and editorial writers to nominate for membership

I worked for the City of Dallas for some years and I know from the inside how these things work. When the auditor issues any kind of report such as this piece of junk about the landfill, city staff has the opportunity to respond. I’d be willing to wager every single cent I’ve ever earned and every cent I hope to earn in the future that, at least during one point in the process, the staff disagreed with just about every single word in the auditor’s document. Yet, when it finally becsme public, an assistant city manager, who should have been fired years ago over his handling of issues at the Dallas Animal Shelter among other fiascos, responds like some whipped boy and says "Oh, yes, we agree with every lie the auditor has put forward." What a pitiful act of cowardice!

And then the reporters from Morning News, acting more like court stenographers than journalists trying to present the truth to their readers, insert rings through their noses so they can be led around by the auditor. I also worked for a major wire service and this aformentioned newspaper and I know if I submitted stories like the ones they wrote on this subject, I would have been severely castigated by actual editors, like the great Don Myers or the equally superb Ron Cohen, who know what reporting actually means. Why didn’t these reporters march into the auditor’s office and simply say "Prove it"? Laziness is the only reason I can think of.

Then there was that demeaning editorial in yesterday’s Morning News that, without so much as a shred of evidence cast a shadow over the reputation of an individual who is so well respected by her peers in the industry that she was elected statewide president of the Texas Solid Waste Association, who sits on an advisory board at SMU’s School of Engineering, and who, according to former City Manager Teodoro Benavides, singlehandedly saved the City of Dallas from bankruptcy. How many others can make that claim?

The events of the last few weeks involving the Landfill Lies and other related activities have demolished any and all respect I once held for the staff at the top of the city’s organization chart and has destroyed the last shred of credibility I once had for the Dallas Morning News.

And that’s a sad thing to have to admit about two former employers. If only they had simply said "Prove it."

The Morning News' “shocking revelation” about something we’ve known all along

At the top of the front page of today’s Dallas Morning News is the headline "Health law will shrink deficit, budget office says." Like that’s news.

In a stunning example of hyperbole, the first paragraph of the story goes like this:

"President Barach Obama’s health care overhaul will shrink rather than increase the nation’s huge federal deficit over the next decade, Congress’ nonpartisan budget scorekeepers said Tuesday, supporting Obama’s contention in a major election-year dispute with Republicans"

Wake up, News! The Congressional Budget Office has been saying the President’s health care plan would reduce the deficit from the moment the White House proposed it. In fact, if you read past the jump on the News’ story, all the way down to the 10^th paragraph, you will find these words:

"The Congressional Budget Office has consistently projected that Obama’s overhaul will reduce the deficit …"

Duh! Then what’s the news value in this story? Maybe it’s just the Morning News that has realized for the first time what the CBO has been saying all along. Now, that’s a scary thought for those who depend on the paper as their primary news source.

If Clemens doesn’t get in, it becomes a Hall of Shame

Roger Clemens was the greatest pitcher of his generation. The only person who comes close to Clemens is Randy Johnson, Clemens won seven Cy Young awards, more than any other pitcher in history. He made the all-star team 11 times and was on two world championship teams. He ranks ninth among all pitchers in major league history in wins. Of those with more wins, only Greg Maddux (with one more win than Clemens, 355-354), is not in baseball’s Hall of Fame and you can bet your bottom dollar that will be remedied as soon as Maddux becomes eligible. Only two pitchers in baseball history, Nolan Ryan and the aforementioned Johnson, struck out more batters. Clemens is the poster child for a slam dunk entry into the Hall of Fame.

However, there’s more than a mere handful of pompous baseball beat writers – the bums who have the ultimate say-so on who gets into the Hall and who is blacklisted – that are going to keep Clemens out because they believe from their self-constructed lofty perches they know more than the jury that acquitted Clemens this week of perjury charges stemming from his emphatic denial before Congress that he was injected with steroids.

These writers are two-faced sanctimonious hypocrites. Let’s see. They voted Gaylord Perry into the Hall of Fame, a pitcher who achieved all his success by throwing illegal pitches. Manager Leo Durocher, a close friend of gangster Bugsy Siegel, someone who regularly allowed professional gamblers into his clubhouse, and the person who set up the complex scheme of stealing opposing catcher’s signals that allowed his New York Giants to win the 1951 National League pennant, is also a member of the Hall of Fame.

If these outlaws and cheaters are permitted entry, then Clemens better be voted in as well or the Hall becomes what Groucho Marx once called "a mockery, a sham, a mockery of a sham."

Not only that, the Hall deserves to be boycotted by all true baseball fans if Clemens is denied entry. Simply don’t go to Cooperstown, N.Y. Don’t support an outfit that denies entry to the greatest ballplayers of this or any other era, just because a group of prejudiced sportswriters placed themselves on a pedestal above the law.

Random thoughts on the NBA, DPD, DMN. DART and other acronyms

I really don’t like the Miami Heat. I don’t like the way the team collected it’s Big Three, and don’t try to tell me the Boston Celtics did the same thing, because they didn’t. They acquired Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen through some shrewd trades. And don’t get me started on that whole LeBron James "decision" thing. On the other hand, I really do like the Oklahoma Thunder, partly because its No. 1 star played his college ball at my alma mater, but mainly because I admire the team’s approach to the game. Guess who I’m going to be rooting for in the NBA finals that begin tonight.

I admire Dallas Police Chief David Brown. I have worked with him in the past and always found himself to be a professional, a standup guy. (I wanted to call him a "straight-shooter," but realized that didn’t fit in this context.) Still, this idea of shooting a man in the back in self defense smells, no matter how much Chief Brown tries to spin it.

I rarely find myself in agreement with Dallas Morning News editorials, but I must admit I find the paper’s suggestion for an open primary in Texas to something worth pursuing. California has adopted this system in attempt to reduce partisanship and free the primaries from being captured by extremists, as they have been in Texas. The way an open primary works is this: All candidates would keep their party affiliations but there would no longer be separate primaries for each political party. Instead, all the candidates for each office would appear one ballot and everyone — Republicans, Democrats and, most importantly, independents — would have the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice. Then two candidates who received the most votes for each office would face off in the November general election, even if it meant two Republicans running against each other or Veasey vs. Garcia. The theory is that candidates — in order to appeal to the widest number of voters — would gravitate toward the center of the political ideological spectrum. For those who say such a system couldn’t work, that’s exactly the way Dallas elects its mayor.

DART is looking for a way to get more riders. To achieve this goal it must overcome a tremendous obstacle and convince potential customers it’s absolutely safe the use the transit system. I know of one woman who’s son refuses to let her ride DART rail because he fears it’s too dangerous for a woman traveling alone. Until such fears are eradicated, DART will never achieve the ridership levels it should.

This headline in today’s Dallas Morning News caught my attention: "Drownings concern safety experts". Ya think?

Gosselin goosed by his own logic

I have all the respect in the world for Rick Gosselin. How could I not? I began my professional journalism career with UPI and from there went to the Dallas Morning News. Years later, Gosselin followed my example. Well, maybe not followed mine, exactly, but he did go from UPI to the Morning News where he became the world’s foremost authority on the National Football League, and I’m including the gurus in Bristol, Conn., as part of that world.

Rick Gosselin

Gosselin should stick to the NFL, however, because when he ventures outside of it he gets himself in trouble. Take his column in Monday’s News, for example, in which he argues only college football conference champions should be allowed to participate in a four-team playoff to determine the national champion. (Interestingly, there's no reference to this particular column on the paper's Web site. Did it embarrass enough people that the editors had it removed?) He supports his argument by saying a team’s regular season games should count for something, but then argues that, no, they really shouldn’t. What Gosselin is actually arguing is that only a team’s conference season games should count, not realizing that up to a third of a team’s regular season schedule consists of non-conference games.

He’s upset that last year the two best teams in the country were both from the same conference. According to his ludicrous argument, PAC-10 co-champ Oregon, which lost decisively to LSU by 13, deserved to play for the national championship, but Alabama, which only lost to LSU by 3 in the regular season (and it took LSU five quarters to finally win it) didn’t. You gotta be kidding me.

He tries to compare the college football season to the college basketball season, arguing that Kentucky didn’t deserve to play for the national title because it lost its conference tournament to Vanderbilt. His same argument would have also kept Kansas, the team Kentucky played for the national championship, out of the tournament. But, once again, Gosselin’s logic doesn’t hold. Kansas and Kentucky actually won their conference titles, which are altogether different beasts than the conference’s tournament championships.

Using Gosselin’s argument, the NFL should simply do away with its post season playoff and have the team with the best record in the NFC after the regular season play its counterpart in the AFC in the Super Bowl.

Here’s another problem with Gosselin’s argument: If only conference champs could play for the national title, then neither the Mighty Midshipmen from Navy nor the Mighty Mormons from Brigham Young could ever play for that title because they don’t even belong to a conference. They are independents and proud of it.

Oh, yes, then there’s that whats-its-name school from South Bend, Ind. It wouldn’t qualify either which would make for a stew of angry Irishmen and women.

Clinton on LBJ

The fourth installment of Robert Caro’s exhaustive and brilliantly written biography of Lyndon Johnson, The Passsage of Power, has just been published. It covers the period of his life from just before the 1960 presidential election until those months after the tragedy that led to his ascension to the presidency when he managed to cajole a reluctant Congress to pass stalled legislation that completely changed the American political landscape.

The New York Times chose former President Bill Clinton to write the review of Caro’s book, which will grace the cover of this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section. I was fascinated with the first part of the review’s concluding paragraph.

"Even when we parted company over the Vietnam War, I never hated L.B.J. the way many young people of my generation came to. I couldn’t. What he did to advance civil rights and equal opportunity was too important. I remain grateful to him. L.B.J. got to me, and after all these years, he still does."

Unintentionally (?) funny line from Cooperstein

I was listening to the Mavericks-Lakers game on radio yesterday afternoon when announcer Chuck (Is there a better play-by-play man in radio?) Cooperstein described a foul on the Mavericks’ Jason Kidd by the Lakers forward formerly known as Ron Artest: "World Peace smacked Kidd alongside the head."

Goodell right, Cowlishaw wrong

In a column on the front of the sports page of today’s Dallas Morning News, Tim Cowlishaw mistakenly writes that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s punishment handed down to the New Orleans Saints surrounding the "pay-to-permanently cripple" program was too harsh. (I would inlude a link to the column, but because the News makes people pay to read it, you might as well use that money to purchase an entire paper or, even more nourishing than that, use it to buy two tacos at Jack in the Box.) It appears Cowlishaw also thinks former President Richard Nixon was impeached because of the Wartergate break-in.

Cowlishaw's opinion
a real head-scratcher

Of course, that’s not the reason Nixon was driven from the White House. His crime was the systematic cover-up implemented to hide his administration’s involvement in a series of election dirty tricks.

By the same token New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton was not only punished for overseeing his reprehensible bounty program. Goodell came down hard on him because on two different occasions Payton sat down with the commissioner and outright lied to him about any knowledge Payton had about the affair. He was the caretaker of the program and then he tried to cover it up. At least twice.

I have already expressed my admiration for Goodell’s correct handling of this incident. And, fortunately, the News has an expert on all things NFL and other sports, Rick Gosselin, who also applauds Goodell (although Gosselin’s more reasoned column is buried inside the sports section). Someone needs to educate Cowlishaw before he makes himself look even more wrong-headed on this issue.