E-N endoresment speculation

The Express-News editorial board has so far stuck with its rule of endorsing Republicans and incumbents almost exclusively. If you are an incumbent Republican, you are guaranteed an endorsement from the E-N. If you are a Democratic incumbent, you have about a 50-50 chance. And if you are a Democrat challenging a Republican, forgetaboutit.
The other day, the E-N endorsed all the incumbent Congressmen from San Antonio except for Democrat Ciro Rodriguez, which is the only race that is being seriously contested. Today they endorsed Republican John Cornyn for the U.S. Senate over challenger Rick Noriega.
The only question now is how they will come down Sunday when they are do to make their presidential endorsement. Will they continue their Republican tilt and endorse John McCain? Or have they been endorsing all Republicans up until now in an effort to innoculate themselves from criticism that they are too liberal if they endorse Barack Obama?
As lousy as their endorsements have been so far, I think there is still a chance that they could endorse Obama for the simple reason that they can see the writing on the wall and will want to present themselves as having been on the winning side. That is pretty much why the wingnutty editorial board at the Washington Post just endorsed Obama.
Nevertheless, I will still be somewhat surprised if it does go that way. I fully expect they will continue their hard-right tilt led by the Cheneyesque Neo-con Jonathan Gurwitz who calls all the shots there these days.

McCain wins one

Watching excerpts of John McCain and Barack Obama’s remarks at the 63rd annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner last night made me realize how quickly McCain will be able to rebound from what will undoubtedly be a trouncing in this election. He’s a funny guy. And he can be very charming when he is being self-effacing.
McCain clearly gave the better performance at the dinner. Whether it was due to having a better speechwriter or a more practiced and comicly-timed delivery I’m not sure, but if we were voting on an after-dinner speaker rather than a president, Obama might be in trouble right now. McCain’s years of being on the lecture circuit at just these kinds of events, plus his numerous appearances on the David Letterman and Jay Leno show’s clearly showed last night.
His best line of the night was probably when he deadpanned that despite being amongst a group of Manhattan Democrats he felt that there were some out there who were pulling for him. He then paused a moment to allow some light applause before looking over into the audience with a big smile and saying “Hillary! I’m so glad to see you here tonight!”
I also liked when he kidded himself about calling Obama “That One” during one of the debates, saying that it was just a pet name that he has for him and noted that Obama has a pet name for him too — George Bush.
Obama wasn’t bad, but it was hard to match McCain who seemed to turn on a dime from being a grouchy, angry old man to a debonair and witty dinner host.

Speaking their language

What struck me about last night’s debate was not that McCain was throwing everything including the kitchen sink at Obama, but that he seemed to be going to great lengths to appeal to his right-wing fundamentalist base by touching on many of their pet issues as he could and using buzz words that only really mean anything to that small demographic group.
It was a given that McCain was going to raise the non-issues about William Ayers and ACORN (though interestingly nothing about Rev. Jeremiah Wright), and Obama was ready with his responses which effectively neutralized those attacks. But McCain went further by raising Obama’s vote in the Illinois Senate against the so-called Born Alive Infant Protection Act which is really only familiar to people on the far fringes of the anti-abortion movement. Why McCain thinks he needs to appeal to people like TTFKAM is beyond me.
Nevertheless, Obama’s answer was definitive, noting that state law already protected the life of a baby born alive (not to mention the Hippocratic Oath) and that the act was simply an attempt to chip away at abortion rights and was unConstitutional in its present form.
McCain then decided to throw himself under a bus by mocking concerns about a woman’s health in respect to abortions. His complaint that the definition of “health” is stretched too far is a common tactic of the far right, but it is not commonly discussed in polite society so he came across sounding crass and cold. Obama, on the other hand, made it clear that he wants to seek a middle ground that will help reduce the number of abortions without taking away a woman’s choice in the matter.
Ultimately, I thought it was clear that Obama won the debate as the polls later confirmed.


On a side note, I was disappointed to see that infant mortality rates in the U.S. are still high.

Infant deaths in the United States declined 2 percent in 2006, government researchers reported Wednesday, but the rate still remains well above that of most other industrialized countries and is one of many indicators suggesting that Americans pay more but get less from their health care system.
Infant mortality has long been considered one of the most important indicators of the health of a nation and the quality of its medical system. In 1960, the United States ranked 12th lowest in the world, but by 2004, the latest year for which comparisons were issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that ranking had dropped to 29th lowest.

It is interesting to note that the U.S. is even behind Cuba in this all-important measure of our nation’s health.

Their vilest hour: The GOP's Ayers attack

There’s a great column in the Wall Street Journal today by Thomas Frank defending William Ayers.
Not his actions when he was a radical in the 1960s, but his life since then in which he has been a model citizen and respected university professor in Chicago.

I am a friend of Mr. Ayers. In fact, I met him in the same way Mr. Obama says he did: 10 years ago, Mr. Ayers was a guy in my neighborhood in Chicago who knew something about fundraising. I knew nothing about it, I needed to learn, and a friend referred me to Bill.

Bill's got lots of friends, and that's because he is today a dedicated servant of those less fortunate than himself; because he is unfailingly generous to people who ask for his help; and because he is kind and affable and even humble. Moral qualities which, by the way, were celebrated boisterously on day one of the GOP convention in September.

Mr. Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where his work is esteemed by colleagues of different political viewpoints. Herbert Walberg, an advocate of school vouchers who is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, told me he remembers Mr. Ayers as "a responsible colleague, in the professional sense of the word." Bill Schubert, who served as the chairman of UIC's Department of Curriculum and Instruction for many years, thinks so highly of Mr. Ayers that, in response to the current allegations, he compiled a lengthy résumé of the man's books, journal articles, guest lectures and keynote speeches. Mr. Ayers has been involved with countless foundation efforts and has received various awards. He volunteers for everything. He may once have been wanted by the FBI, but in the intervening years the man has become such a good citizen he ought to be an honorary Eagle Scout.

Rightwingers insist that Ayers is “unrepentent” which is disingenuous. Mr. Ayers has in fact repudiated the violent actions of the Weathermen (which, by the way, did not harm anyone except for some of their own members who were killed when a bomb accidently went off).
What he has not repudiated is his opposition to the Vietnam war. When rightwingers say Ayers is unrepentent, this is what they really mean. The only way he could truly reform himself in their eyes would be to come out and say that he was wrong to oppose the Vietnam War. And then vote Republican.
Short of that, the rightwingers are extremely unforgiving and will hold a grudge to the bitter end.

Frank goes on to express his disgust over the Republican campaign to try and vilify Ayers today in an attempt to drag Obama down.

...in its haste to convict a man merely for associating with Mr. Ayers, the GOP is effectively proposing to make the upcoming election into the largest mass trial in history, with all those professors and all those do-gooders on the hook for someone else's deeds four decades ago.
The McCain campaign has made much of its leader's honor and bravery, but now it has chosen to mount its greatest attack against a man who poses no conceivable threat to the country, who has nothing to do with this year's issues, and who cannot or will not defend himself. Apparently this makes him an irresistible target.
There are a lot of things to call this tactic, but "country first" isn't one of them. The nation wants its hope and confidence restored, and Republican leaders have chosen instead to wave the bloody shirt. This is their vilest hour.

I’m not sure what rightwingers expected Obama to do back when he was first introduced to Ayers, who at the time was an established and highly respected academic and social activist.
Refuse to shake his hand? Spit in his eye?
Is that what John McCain would have done?

But the point is that Repubicans don’t want anyone to think that deeply about this issue. All they want is some excuse, no matter how contrived, to associate Obama with a “terrorist” and make people question his patriotism or what have you.

Who's “paling around” with terrorists?

You’ve got to be kidding me. This is insane.

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.
The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.

So, McCain’s choice to head his transition team is a guy who used to lobby on behalf of Saddam Hussein.

And McCain is trying to make a big deal out of Barack Obama serving on the same board with William Ayers once?!?!?!

William Ayers was a radical anti-war activist in the late-60s whose group set off some bombs but never hurt anyone other than the time a bomb accidently went off and killed some of their own members. I’m not sure how or why Ayers escaped punishment for his activites back then, but he eventually went on to become a respected professor in the Chicago area where he once served on a board with Barack Obama as part of a school reform initiative sponsored by Republican philanthropist Walter Annenberg.
And Ayers once hosted a fundraising “coffee” for Obama during one of his state Senate campaigns.
That is the full extent of their relationship. And of course Ayers has no connection whatsoever with Obama today or with his presidential campaign.

But here we have John McCain who taps as the leader of his transition team a guy who used to be a lobbyist for Saddam Hussein! Talk about ‘paling around with terrorists’! Sheesh!
This is not some guy that McCain had a fleeting and tenuous relationship with in the distant past. He is set to be a leader in a McCain administration. The people who head the transition team for the president-elect invariably wind up with key positions in the administration.
Key positions! A lobbyist for Saddam Hussein!!!
Have I stressed this point enough?

Needless to say, I don’t want to hear another word from Republicans about William Ayers.

Express-News thumbs nose at Ciro

The Express-News editorial board outdid itself today with a glowing endorsement of Republican Lyle Larson for the 22nd District Congressional seat held by Democrat Ciro Rodriguez.
Nevermind that Democrats are in the majority and are on the verge of substantially increasing there majority next term and for the forseeable future. Nevermind that Ciro sits on the coveted House Appropriations Committee which is vitally important for San Antonio and all of its military bases.
No, the E-N thinks we need to pitch our veteran congressman out on his rear and replace him with a freshman Republican who will be stuck in the minority with no power and no influence for who knows how long.
In the editorial, they don’t say one word that is critical of Ciro and give no explanation for why they want to turn him out of office. It is just all glowing praise of Larson and how wonderful and independent he is. Bullshit! He will be just like John Cornyn and vote with the rightwing of his party on each and every issue.
What’s more is he is parroting John McCain’s moronic stance against “earmarks” without considering that those so-called earmarks are what is funding many of the big military projects here that are propping our local economy up - the same projects which the Express-News is always touting and raving about.
I am completely disgusted with the local paper and its rightwing neocon editorial board. They endorsed Bush twice and have been consistent cheerleaders for the quagmire in Iraq. Now I am just waiting for their John McCain endorsement next weekend. It should be good for a few laughs.

GOP - Party of fiscal irresponsibility

This was a great post over at Daily Kos....

The national debt when Jimmy Carter arrived at the White House:

$660 billion.

Added during Carter's four years: $337 billion.

Added during Ronald Reagan's eight years: $1.6 trillion.

Added during George H. W. Bush's four years: $1.6 trillion.

Added during Bill Clinton's eight years: $1.5 trillion.

Added during George W. Bush's seven years, nine months: $4.5 trillion.

Portion of the $9.5 trillion added to the national debt during the past 31 years and seven months that came during Republican presidencies: $7.7 trillion.

Percentage of that $7.7 trillion added during George W. Bush's two terms: 58%.

Good Lord! When you look at the numbers like that it is just astonishing. Ronald Reagan set us on this mega-debt rollercoaster and Bush Sr. went along for the ride. Bill Clinton was just managing to put the brakes on when Bush Jr. got in there, threw the breaks away and sent us over a cliff.

The Shrill One wins a Nobel prize

I was thrilled this morning to see that one of my favorite columnists - Paul Krugman - won the Nobel prize in economics this year.
This starts to make up for the Nobel committee’s snubbing of John Kenneth Galbraith while giving its top prize to Milton Friedman many years ago.

Throw the bum out!

What a moroon!

West Palm Beach Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL), whose predecessor resigned in the wake of a sex scandal, agreed to a $121,000 payment to a former mistress who worked on his staff and was threatening to sue him, according to current and former members of his staff who have been briefed on the settlement, which involved Mahoney and his campaign committee.
Pic: Congressman Tim Mahoney and his alleged former mistress, Patricia Allen
The affair between Congressman Tim Mahoney and Patricia Allen began, according to current and former staffers, in 2006 when Mahoney was campaigning for Congress against Foley, promising "a world that is safer, more moral."
Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman, Patricia Allen, a $50,000 a year job for two years at the agency that handles his campaign advertising, the staffers said.

The guy has an affair while winning a congressional seat he would not have won otherwise except for the fact that the incumbent (Mark Foley) was involved in a sex scandal. Idiot!!
I don’t care if it means giving the seat back to the Republicans, I don’t want an idiot like Mahoney in Congress. representing my party. He should resign his seat immediately.

Impeach Sarah Palin!

The Troopergate report is absolutely scathing in its assessment of Gov. Palin's chronic abuse of power during her brief tenure as Alaska's governor.
When somebody is as demonstratable vindictive as that with that kind of power, the last thing you want to do is hand them even more power.
The citizens of Alaska who thought they were cleaning our their corrupt government by electing Sarah and Todd Palin were sadly mistaken.

Another term limits rant

San Antonio has the most godawful, stupidest term limits restrictions of any major city in the nation. The four-years-and-you’re-out rule keeps San Antonio’s city government permanently handicapped with inexperienced leaders focused on short-term goals.
There is not another entity of any kind in the nation that would tolerate such a ridiculous restriction.
Who would invest their money in a company that pitched out all of its top executives every four years and started fresh with green-behind-the-ears newbies?
What if the San Antonio Spurs tossed out all their veteran players every four years and started over with a team of rookies? How many NBA titles do you think they would win?
The people who are trying to keep this term-limit stranglehold on our city government are either grossly ignorant as to the impact their stubborness is having on the city or they just flat-out hate muncipal government and want to see it constantly fail.
We have got to loosen this noose around our city government’s neck if we want our city to continue to be healthy and vibrant going into the future.
If you live in San Antonio and you care about our city, please go out and vote Nov. 4 for the very reasonable compromise extending term limits to eight years.

Filibuster-proof Senate

The Democrats appear to have an outside shot at a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate next session by winning enough races to bring their total to 60.
Right now the Senate is split 49-49 with two Independents who caucus with the Democrats — the Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and the Neo-Con Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.
It is unclear whether Lieberman will continue to caucus with the Democrats next year in light of his support for John McCain this election season, going so far as to speak at the Republican National Convention last month. A lot of Democrats want to kick Lieberman out of the caucus and strip him of his chairmanship.
Since the Republicans are not likely to win this election, the next best thing that could happen for Lieberman is if the Democrats come within one vote of that magic 60-vote number. Then they would have to continue holding their noses and allowing him to chair a committee so that he would stay in the caucus.

Here is how the Senate races are shaping up so far:
There are no Democrats in danger of losing their seats. Even Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, once considered to be the weakest link, is running well ahead of her Republican opponent.
Republicans, on the other hand, are in a world of hurt. Two formerly Republican seats are already considered to be locked up by Democrats - Mark Warner in Virginia and Tom Udall in New Mexico.
Two more are considered highly likely to flip to the Democrats — Mark Udall in Colorado and Jean Shaheen in New Hampshire.
Then there are four more races that are very close but have recently been trending in favor of the Democrats:
Kay Hagan in North Carolina threatening to topple Elizabeth Dole;
Mark Begich in Alaska facing the scandal-plagued Ted Stevens;
Jeff Merkley of Oregon has moderate Republican Gordon Smith on the run;
and Al Franken of Minnesota has taken a slim lead over Norm Coleman.

If the Democrats win all these contests it would be considered a fantastic triumph for the party. But it would still leave them one short of the 60-vote supermajority even counting the two independents.

So now we turn to four long-shot races that look like they could flip if there is a tidal wave of support for Democrats on election day. Those include Ronnie Musgrove in Mississippi; Bruce Lunsford in Kentucky; Jim Martin in Georgia and Rick Noriega in Texas.
If the Democrats pick up one of those, they have 60wL (with Lieberman). If they win two of the four they have 60 and they can ditch Lieberman.

Realistically, I am not getting my hopes up that high. But the fact that this scenario is even possible now is quite remarkable.

Virginia is turning blue

The latest polls show Obama up by double digits in Virginia!
To understand the significance of this you have to be versed in some of the number-crunching statistics of electoral politics.
So far in this campaign Republicans have failed to make any headway in the so-called Kerry states, or those states won by John Kerry in 2004. In addition, Obama seems to have a lock on Iowa and New Mexico which both went narrowly for Bush in 04.
Assuming that does not change, Obama can win by picking up any one of the following states - Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Missouri or Indiana. He is currently leading in all of those states with the exception of Indiana where McCain still has a narrow lead but was never before considered to be a swing state in the first place.
To repeat, anyone of those states can push Obama over the top. If all or even most of them go for Obama, we are talking landslide of historic proportions not seen by a Democrat since LBJ.
And did I mention that I am not even counting New Hampshire, Colorado or Nevada in the Obama column, even though he is leading in those states as well? My current dream number for an Obama landslide is 364. He only needs 270 to win.
When people look at an electoral map of the U.S., it always looks more red than blue. But that is misleading because the map emphasizes land mass which does not matter rather than people. For example, the New England block which Democrats have a lock on - Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut - has as many electoral votes as Texas. If you throw in some of the other reliably Democratic states just below that region - Delaware, Maryland, D.C., New Jersey - you have a block of electoral votes the same size as California. And when you add in the big population states like California, New York and Illinois which are currently gimmees for Democrats and throw in the reliably Democratic Midwest states like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, then it comes down to who can win Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida.
Fun stuff!

Gun nuts for McCain!

Here is some shocking news. The National Gun Nuts Association (NGNA) has endorsed John McCain for president.
I never would have seen THAT coming!
Legitimate gun owners, of course, have nothing to fear from Democrats or a Barack Obama administration. It is just the complete whack jobs like Wayne LaPierre, president of the NGNA, who advocate for unrestricted, total deregulation of the gun industry (we saw how well that worked out for the financial industry) who have something to worry about. If your dream is to one day walk into my kid’s elementary school carrying a military assault rifle, or board a commercial airliner with a plastic gun and a round of armor piercing cop-killer bullets in your belt, then you are probably going to be out of luck under an Obama administration because he will support COMMON SENSE gun laws that won’t restrict in any way the activities of legitimate hunters or the ability of people to protect themselves in their homes.
It is a real shame. There used to be a respected gun owners group called the National Rifle Association or NRA, but it no longer exists today having been overrun by crazy people like Wayne LaPierre. I think they may even still use that name, but don’t be fooled. It is not the same organization that it was.

What’s Left? Part III

This column was published on Aug. 3, 1995

Promotions unnecessarily lure players to state ‘lootery’

I soured on the lottery about four years ago. That was back before Texas took the plunge. I was living in Connecticut at the time, a different world for a South Texas native, working for a chain of newspapers along the coast.
One day as I was standing in line at a small grocery market, I noticed an elderly woman ahead of me with a meager offering of groceries. I assumed from her pauper-like appearance that she was of less than substantial means. As the cashier rang her up, she glanced into her purse and suddenly looked up startled. Stopping the cashier, she picked up a package of meat and asked to take it back so she could buy her daily allotment of lottery tickets.
I couldn’t believe it! This woman was taking food off of her table so she could purchase some worthless lottery tickets. I was beside myself with outrage and disgust, so I decided to look into the matter more thoroughly.
As it turns out, Connecticut was making a killing on lottery tickets that year, raking in an estimated $525 million. That’s a lot of money to squeeze out of a little bitty state like Connecticut. Texas lottery officials are boasting about bringing in $927 million in lottery revenues last year and that from a state with a population four and a half times the size of Connecticut.
Mind you, this was going on in the midst of a really bad recession in the Northeast. Despite having approximately 40 percent of this mountain cash flowing directly into the state treasury, Connecticut was still struggling to make ends meet and was faced with the biggest budget deficit in its history. Obviously the lottery, which had been around for 18 years there, was not the cure all for the state’s fiscal woes.
Could it be, I wondered, that the lottery was more of a drain on the state’s economy than a benefit? People were struggling with massive layoffs, unemployment, low wages and high cost of living; and yet they were spending more on lottery tickets than ever before.
Where does all of this money come from anyway? Well, it’s not appearing out of thin air. In many cases, like the example above, it’s coming straight off the tables of people who can’t afford it. It is also the discretionary income of thousands of working class and middle income people who might have found better and more productive things to do with it. The lottery does not create wealth, it just soaks up whatever is already out there and redistributes about half to a very small group of people.
The money spent on lottery tickets might otherwise have gone towards a night out at the movies, a meal at a nice restaurant, some new clothes, a family vacation, savings for a child’s education and so on. In other words, it is money that could have been reinvested in the community to support local businesses or put into savings which helps banks make loans to new businesses and to people buying new homes.
Instead it is money that is being frittered away on one of the oldest con games known to man. Any professional gambler could tell you that the lottery has the worst odds of any form of gambling ever devised. Your odds of being killed in an automobile accident tomorrow are much better than your chances of winning the big Lotto jackpot. Think about it.
But it is not my place to tell people how to spend their money. And I know that some people would even argue that playing the lottery is worth losing their money on because of the enjoyment they get from those few moments of anticipation as they scratch their numbers or listen to the winning numbers on the nightly news. It reminds me of the time when I was a youth buying packages of baseball cards at the concession stand during Little League games. You could never tell if that next pack of cards might be the one containing the Johnny Bench or Pete Rose cards that I so highly valued.
So my gripe is not with the people that play the lottery. My frustration is with the state government which has decided to tap into people’s weaknesses for this type of entertainment to make some easy money for the state coffers. Silly me, I was naive enough to think that the government was supposed to protect people from being taken advantage of like this. Instead, the government is spending millions of dollars a year ($34 million this past year) on advertising and promotion to entice people to gamble their hard-earned money away.
Oh sure, it raises money for the government, some of which can be used for good things like education. (The ‘profits’ are added to the general fund and not applied to any particular budget item). But if the lottery is to serve as a new form of taxation, we should judge it accordingly and recognize that it is extremely regressive and inefficient. It is regressive because the people who play most frequently tend to be poor and less educated. It is inefficient because less than 40 percent of every dollar collected makes it into the state treasury, unlike most other taxes where it costs less than 2 percent to collect and administer and 98 percent ends up in the treasury.
So here in a nutshell is what I would like to see done. Let the government continue to run a lottery for those people who choose to play, but eliminate all advertising and promotion so as not to entice people into playing who otherwise would not. If that means that ticket sales decline, then all the better. Taxes that are needed should be collected in a fair and efficient manner, otherwise leave people alone to pursue more productive interests with their income.

What’s Left, Part II

This column was published on July 27, 1995.

No sympathy for schools fighting admission of women

The administrators at The Citadel probably should have seen it coming.
The application for admission from Shannon Faulkner to the all-male military academy in South Carolina met all the criteria — all but one, that is.
Somehow it slipped by the admissions officials that Faulkner’s application made no reference to gender. It was only after sending out notification of acceptance that school officials realized that in this case, the person with the gender-neutral name “Shannon” was in fact a Ms.
Now the state-funded school is embroiled in a costly legal battle to keep its all-male “tradition” from being defiled by the admission of a female cadet.
Enough of this nonsense! I haven’t a shred of sympathy for The Citadel or its sister outfit, The Virginia Military Institute, which finds itself in a similar predicament. The wailing and gnashing of teeth at The Citadel and VMI are amplified only because they are the oddities. Every other military school and academy went through the pains of gender integration long ago, including my alma mater, Texas A&M’s Corps of Cadets.
The administrators at The Citadel and VMI (urged on no doubt by their respective alumni associations) made a poor decision years ago when they chose to ignore the dictates and direction of the U.S. Military which was then struggling to integrate women more thoroughly into its ranks at the same time that it was adjusting to the all-volunteer concept of personnel recruitment.
It makes no sense today to have a segregated military school when its purpose is to train people to be leaders in the non-segregated U.S. Military. In fact, it would seem that the cadets at these two institutions are being done a great disservice. How will graduates from these schools react to their female peers and superiors in the military when they have been indoctrinated in the belief that they cannot work with female cadets?
Texas A&M began allowing women into the Corps of Cadets in the early 1970s, although it would be years later before they would gain anything close to equal status with the male cadets. I was there to see a good portion of it in the mid-1980s.
During my freshman year in 1983, there were two all-female outfits that stayed in separate dormitories, which they shared with non-cadet female students. They had their own separate women’s drill team and could not be in the Texas Aggie Band.
But during the next three years things began to change. In 1985, a handful of female freshmen cadets joined the Aggie Band. At least one that I know of stuck it out to her senior year and she was followed by more. A female cadet from my class was the first to be admitted to the Ross Volunteers, the official honor guard for the governor of Texas. Then the women’s drill team was disbanded and even the ultra-macho Fish Drill Team was integrated.
Another female cadet from my class was the first to be elevated to the rank of Corps staff, directing operations for the entire Corps. I still remember the fretting and worrying about whether she could stay in the same dorm with the other members of Corps staff. The old Corps-style dorms had communal bathrooms and showers, two per floor, so that meant one would have to be closed off for the exclusive use of just one person.
The thing that made the biggest impression on me at the time was how efficient the military was at instituting these “big” changes once it set its mind to it. During my sophomore year the word came down from the higher ups that the term “waggie” would no longer be tolerated as a reference to the female cadets. That was final, no questions asked. To disobey at that point would mean big trouble, not because your immediate superiors were die-hard feminists, but because obeying orders regardless of what they were was tantamount to maintaining discipline.
By the time I left in 1987, the Trigon (the Aggie version of the Pentagon) was making plans to break up the two female outfits and combine them with other male outfits. Troubles did eventually develop as I surmised from reading news reports after graduating. There was at least one sexual harassment lawsuit filed, perhaps more. But the Corps survived and even thrived during this time.
The arrogance and short-sightedness of the leaders at The Citadel and VMI means that their transition will be all the more painful. The first female cadet at these institutions, be it Shannon Faulkner or someone else, will not be willing to wait 10-plus years to take full advantage of all that the school has to offer.

Addendum
This column generated my first piece of “fan mail” reprinted below:

30 July 95
Mike W. Thomas (Michele?)
I read you’re editorial “No sympathy for schools fighting admission of women” 29 July 1995 i.e. The Citadel and VMI (wonderful old military schools).
It seems a lot of the Liberals, Woman’s Libers, pro queer, integrators and the like flock to the Kerrville Times.
I believe anyone, whether corporate or private club etc., should have a choice of who they want - black, women, men, queer, or what have you and no one should have to accept who they do not want!
Also, the TV is on you’re side all of commercials seem to show groups of whites and blacks buddying up to each other. Not me I befriend who I want and don’t believe in any kind of integration of blacks, women or the other creeps!
I imagine you’re patron saint is St. Francis of A-Sissy.

I hope you guys have the guts to publish this.

(Name withheld)

What’s Left, Part I

During the summer of 1995 I was working as a reporter and editorial writer for the Kerrville Daily Times and I had the rare privilege of writing a weekly opinion column for the paper. I had written a couple of columns previously, including the one on the JFK assassination, but now I had a regular column with my picture on it and even a name. I called it “What’s Left?”
Alas, it was short-lived. A couple of months after I began writing the column, I got a job at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and moved away. So there were only 11 “What’s Left?” columns published over a three-month period.
For my own edification, I am going to publish those old columns on my blog as I have time to transcribe them. Here is one of the first, published on July 20, 1995.

Choices few for those who decline alcohol

Despite the gray patches that have begun showing up in my hair, most people still tell me I look young for my age. That goes double for my wife, what at 27 still looks like she should be in high school.
When we go out to a nice restaurant, it’s not unusual for the waiter or waitress to assume that we are just kids out on a date. Their suspicions of our youthfulness always seem to be confirmed when we decline to order an alcoholic beverage. The general assumption is that if we were old enough to drink we would, so therefore we must be too young.
This is irritating for several reasons, not least of which is that from that point on we generally receive poor service. After all, we are just a couple of kids probably using our parent’s credit card and aren’t likely to leave a good tip.
But the most annoying aspect is the idea that we could somehow have demonstrated our age and maturity by drinking. Is it any wonder that we have a serious problem today with underage drinking — not to mention drinking in general — when drinking is constantly used as the yardstick that measures the difference between youth and adulthood?
In today’s alcohol-soaked culture, the very term “drink” has come to mean the consumption of liquor. In college, students learn quickly that they have to drink to fit in with the in crowd. Every party I ever went to in college revolved around alcohol and I spent much of the time holding a half-empty glass of lukewarm beer so that people would not continually harass me about “not having a good time.”
All through my college years there seemed to be an invisible barrier separating my friends who would drink and my friends who did not. There were few social activities we could find to do together after our freshman year. It seemed quite apparent in those days, too, that the drinking crowd was more popular with the opposite sex. Their continuous parties always attracted lots of young women while those of us who did not drink saw ourselves as the geeky, nerdish-types who could never find dates.
Today, the pressures on our youth to drink in order to fit in, have fun and show their maturity are no less daunting. Raising the drinking age to 21 appears to have made the activity seem all the more alluring to youth seeking to be treated as adults.
I’m not persuaded that any change in the laws, whether it be tightening or loosening restrictions, will make a big difference as long as our societal mindset is such that alcohol is the requisite for any get together involving two or more people. And I would not even begrudge anyone a drink who chooses to do so. My biggest gripe is with the way our society and our culture so often treat the non-drinkers like social misfits.
For a perfect example, go to most any fancy restaurant and see what they have to offer in the way of beverages. For the drinker it is typically a paradise — dozens of beers from around the world, a completely separate menu for all the wines and champagnes and every imaginable mixed drink available at the well-stocked bar.
But for the non-drinker? Well let’s see... There’s tea, one kind only — take it or leave it; a handful of sodas, including diet drinks; and coffee (see reference to tea above). Sometimes you can get milk if you beg and plead with the waiter and don’t mind waiting 30 minutes before they will serve it to you.
There is one clear message that comes out of that and it is quite simple — drinking is cool and non-drinkers are losers. It’s the same message that is pounded every day into the public’s conscience by the constant barrage of beer commercials on television and radio and the hard liquor ads on the billboards and magazines.
I understand that restaurants make a lot of their profit margin off of liquor sales, but wouldn’t it be nice if just once there was a restaurant that catered at least as much to the non-drinkers?
Imagine for a minute if the tables were turned. You walk into a restaurant and they hand you a separate menu for the non-alcoholic beverages. It contains a mile-long list of teas — herbal, fruit, Oriental, English, Irish, etc. — served hot or cold; fruit drinks and juices made from a dozen native and tropical combinations; coffees and espressos and cappuccinos with dozens of flavors to choose from; and along with the usual array of sodas there are numerous off-brands and natural sodas typically found only in health food stores.
When it comes time to order, ask for a beer and watch as they bring you your one and only choice of generic, no-name beer.
Such an arrangement would certainly take a lot of the glamour and mystique out of drinking alcohol.

Ineffective advertising

I saw one of these bumper stickers on a truck the other day and I just had to laugh.

If Republicans want to distribute lots of these stickers then it is just fine with me. On first glance, the red “N” is hard to see and it appears to be just another pro-Obama sticker. That is what I thought when I first saw it and I’m sure most people not versed in the insider politics of the campaign see it the same way.
I also like how they screwed up the grammar in the bottom line, remembering to add an apostrophe for he’s, but leaving it out for it’s.

There have actually been a lot of these anti-Obama stickers floating around that try and mock his campaign using the same imagery in his ads. But most of them amount to basically insider jokes that fly over the heads of the average voter, so to most people they just seem to be promoting Obama rather than tearing him down.

I think it is symptomatic of the fact that most Republicans are unhappy with their candidate and would rather have an anti-Obama sticker on their car instead of a pro-McCain sticker.

Losers.

What’s the matter with Texas?

The McCain campain is tanking in the polls and Obama is running away with the race now.



McCain’s big bounce from the GOP Convention and the Sarah Palin nomination is now just a little glitch in a dominating performance by Obama since early this summer. States that were once considered tossups like Virginia, North Carolina and New Hampshire are now showing double digit leads for Obama. And McCain is steadily losing ground in Ohio and Florida which means he is toast.

So, what’s up with Texas?


McCain’s actually getting more popular here? That’s just crazy.

By the way, this is pretty funny.

Was his nickname “Crash”?

The L.A. Times is reporting on a neglected part of John McCain’s history, that being his penchant for wrecking his airplanes during his career in aviation.

In today's military, a lapse in judgment that causes a crash can end a pilot's career. Though standards were looser and crashes more frequent in the 1960s, McCain's record stands out.
"Three mishaps are unusual," said Michael L. Barr, a former Air Force pilot with 137 combat missions in Vietnam and an internationally known aviation safety expert who teaches in USC's Aviation Safety and Security Program. "After the third accident, you would say: Is there a trend here in terms of his flying skills and his judgment?"
Jeremiah Pearson, a Navy officer who flew 400 missions over Vietnam without a mishap and later became the head of human spaceflight at NASA, said: "That's a lot. You don't want any. Maybe he was just unlucky."

Unlucky! Yeah, that’s what I was wondering when I wrote about just that thing earlier this year after reading through McCain’s bio on Wikipedia.

Imagine if McCain had not been the son of an admiral (and the grandson of another admiral), those mishaps might have ended his flying career before he was sent to Vietnam where (surprise, surprise) he crashed his jet one last time and got taken prisoner.
The whole John McCain story would have been different in that case. If they had grounded him like they would have done with any other military airman at the time, he would never have been a POW and thus probably would not have gone into politics and thus would not be running for president today.