Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Of all the many “tell all” books I have ever seen advertised, the only one I can think of that comes close to actually “telling all” is Donna Brazile’s “Hacks.” I haven’t read the book yet, but the reviews and pre-issue extracts have convinced me that I will do my part to ensure that the book remains on the New York Times best seller list. What follows is a partial list of those Brazile throws under the bus in her latest book. Barack Obama’s neglect left the party broke and i...
Saturday is Veterans Day. When the flag passes you at the parade, stand and salute or place your right hand over your heart. Thank you. Here’s a thought experiment for you. Since you know a lot of the folks who live in Curry County, you need to get the newspaper from a large metropolitan era anywhere in the country and start reading the obituary column. You’ll be reading about the death of folks you don’t know and have never met. When you find some young adult who died tragica...
Uranium One is a mining company that controlled one fifth of the U.S. uranium extraction capacity. Russian interests gained a controlling interest in Uranium One. How could this happen? To do this they had to acquire the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well as the approval of the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS). CFIUS is a committee of the U.S. government that reviews the national security implications of foreign investments in...
The 2016 presidential election showcased both major political parties with an unyielding narrative. This is the second of a two-part series that attempts to connect some political dots to arrive at how and why we are in our current state of affairs. This is the Republican story. Hillary Clinton was going to be the presidential nominee for the Democrats and Republicans smelled blood in the water. There was no way Hillary could win an election when you considered the Obama...
The 2016 presidential election showcased both major political parties with an unyielding narrative. This is the first of a two-part series that attempts to connect some political dots to arrive at how and why we are in our current state of affairs. First, the Democrat story. There was no way Hillary could lose to Trump in a head-to-head campaign. When Bill Clinton established the Clinton Foundation and all its ancillary organizations as charities he did so with the intention...
According to Wikipedia, “Harvey Weinstein is an American film producer and film studio executive. He is best known as co-founder of Miramax, which produced several popular independent films including ‘Pulp Fiction,’ ‘Clerks,’ ‘The Crying Game,’ and ‘Sex, Lies, and Videotape.’” Weinstein is in the news lately, but not for any major new film releases. The New York Times broke the story that Weinstein is a serial abuser of women. In his defense, he appears to be a serial abuser o...
One of the things I miss about active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps is the traditional respect accorded the National Ensign. The Colors ceremony is held each morning at 0800. At that time, a bugler will sound “Attention” and you hear cries of “Colors!” shouted from many corners of the camp. While this is happening, every other activity stops, all hands face the flag, come to attention and render a hand salute if in uniform. If you are in formation, the leader will call th...
So you think the media has treated Donald Trump unfairly. Let’s look at the record. • “By any measure, Donald Trump is unfit to be president” — editorial, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 2016. • “Obama says Trump ‘unfit’ for presidency” — CNN White House Producer Kevin Liptak, August 2016. • “Trump is unfit to be president. He’s an affront to integrity and decency everywhere” — editorial, Baltimore Sun, October 2016. • “Roughly half of the population has voted for somebo...
The latest Hillary Clinton 500-page study in denial, “What Happened” is out, and according to reviews she once again takes full responsibility for losing the election. Shortly after accepting culpability for the disaster, she again lists all the usual suspects who were complicit in her debacle. In addition to Trump, Comey, the New York Times, the Russians, the deplorables, the misogynists and the women who did not vote for her she added Bernie Sanders and President Barack Oba...
When you ask a political operative a question, the politico will pause and run that question through some sort of filter in his head prior to answering. If you reach that person by phone, he is apt to say, “I’m in a meeting right now, but I’ll get back to you later today.” They rarely answer on the spur of the moment because the answer can come back to bite them. How many times have you heard a friend or acquaintance say, “Just once I’d like to hear a politician answer a qu...
Whenever you see footage of our vaunted prime-time news reporters visiting a combat zone, take careful note of what they wear. For some reason they seem to believe that one item of clothing that is required to be a real honest to goodness combat correspondent is a shirt with epaulettes. Even better than that is some sort of bush jacket with the same accessory. Always conscience of the importance of appearances, reporters feel the need to look the part. Image is everything to r...
I’m told that it’s possible to select any one of 71 different gender options for use on Facebook. These include asexual, polygender and two-spirit person, whatever that denotes. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s on the internet so I guess it’s possible. I do know that the Elementary Teachers Foundation of Ontario, held inclusiveness training for their members to familiarize them with the current language of gender and ensure they are sensitive to contemporary gender issues...
Forty years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union went to court to defend the right of Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois. The ACLU defended the group’s right to free speech based on the same laws it had raised during the Civil Rights era when officials tried to stop civil rights marches throughout the South. Recently in Charlottesville, Virginia, the ACLU also supported the “Unite the Right” organization in court when city officials tried to revoke their permit to pr...
When the Obama administration CIA Director John Brennan testified before congressional committees over the last few months he informed them that he presided over a vast web of telecommunication networks that monitored Americans doing business in Russia. Some of these business people were inadvertently communicating with suspected Russian intelligence agents. At some point Brennan would feel a “disturbance in the force” and notify the FBI to investigate the American cit...
The James A. Farley Post Office in New York City was opened in 1914 and has the inscription, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Contrary to what many of us have believed since childhood, this is not the motto of the U.S. Postal Service. The sentence comes from the Greek historian Herodotus and celebrates a system of mounted postal messengers created by the Persians. U.S. Postal policy...
Last week’s Republican effort to reform Obamacare imploded when Sen. John McCain, reinventing his role of “Maverick McCain,” cast the deciding vote against the so-called skinny repeal. A cynic reviewing the short three-act play written, directed and performed by McCain could only conclude that what occurred was payback in spades for treatment he received at the hands of Donald Trump during last year’s primaries. In Act I, Maverick rises from his sick bed and rides to the rescu...
For whatever reason, the term “impeachment” has been making a regular appearance in the media since Jan. 21. Democrats on the far left, alas I repeat myself, have the strange idea that if Donald Trump is impeached, Hillary Clinton will become president. They get this from reading blogs created by people who have never read the United States Constitution and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 as subsequently amended to include the newly created cabinet offices. A rev...
According to Wikipedia, “A conflict of interest exists if the circumstances are reasonably believed (on the basis of past experience and objective evidence) to create a risk that a decision may be unduly influenced by other, secondary interests, and not on whether a particular individual is actually influenced by a secondary interest.” Reading this carefully tells me that the appearance of a conflict of interest is, de facto, a conflict of interest. According to the King Jam...
When Sally Yates testified before a Senate judiciary sub-committee, her bombshell was not that National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had lied to his bosses about speaking to Russian officials. Her big news was that the Russians could use this information to blackmail Flynn. Yates’ testimony was backed up by the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, who told the sub-committee that Moscow could use this type of information as leverage against Flynn and t...
James Comey was well aware that he worked for the president of the United States and that he served at the pleasure of the president. He also knew the president could fire him at any time for any reason. While he knew this at the intellectual level, Comey never believed he would be fired. In March, while speaking at a cybersecurity conference in Boston, Comey told his audience, “You’re stuck with me for about another 6 1/2 years.” As a creature of the Washington polit...
Whatever else James Comey may be, the one thing that has become evident after all the testimony he provided various congressional committees is that he is the consummate political operative. Any testimony he gave should be viewed with that in mind. I base this analysis on several things. Comey began his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee by characterizing the president’s comments about a demoralized FBI as a “lie.” At best the demoralized chara...
On May 30, comedian Kathy Griffin and photographer Tyler Shields decided they would release a series of pictures with Griffin holding the decapitated head of the president of the United States. By the end of the day, her co-host on CNN’s New Year’s Eve show, Anderson Cooper, had tweeted, “For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate.” On Wednesday, CNN fired Griffin. She feels that Cooper...
Washington journalists and analysts like to pontificate regularly that the president of the United States is the commander in chief of the Armed Forces. The really informed correspondents will shorten up the title to CINC. At the same time, the media will pretend the president has no control over any other department in the executive branch of government. President Obama worked hard to help reporters in furthering this fantasy by regularly stating, “I learned about that on t...
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was fond of saying there are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. It’s time to review some known knowns about the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath. The Democrat Party chose to nominate a candidate who was under FBI investigation for committing a federal crime, mishandling of classified information. The major news media chose to accept the candidate’s claim that she was not under criminal investigation but...
One of the few politicians, political operatives, reporters or pundits in Washington, D.C., who has a firm grasp on what it means to serve at the pleasure of the president is former director of the FBI James Comey. In a letter to selected FBI staff, Comey writes: “I have long believed that a President can fire an FBI Director for any reason, or for no reason at all. I’m not going to spend time on the decision or the way it was executed. I hope you won’t either. It is done,...
