City to assume unwelcome label

Quite soon, Princeton, Texas — the city I have called home for the past six years — is going to assume a title I don’t think anyone ever wants for their community.

Princeton will become known as the City to Avoid at Rush Hour. 

How do I know that? Because the Texas Department of Transportatio is going to lay waste to the major east-west thoroughfare that runs straight through the middle of Princeton.

U.S. Highway 380 is going under the bulldozer’s front as TxDOT starts to expand the highway from four lanes to six. Here, though, is the kicker: To expand the highway, TxDOT is going to narrow it, turning it from a four-lane right-of-way to a two-lane.

None of this, I hasten to add, will have much to do with the construction of the freeway bypass TxDOT is planning along the 380 route from Denton to Greenville.

One can argue that Princeton already has the Rush Hour ban label already. Traffic slows to a near stop west bound in the morning and east bound in the aftenoon along U.S. 380. I try to wrap my noodle around what will happen when TxDOT decides to narrow the highway from four lanes to two. It boggles my noggin.

To be candid, at my relatively advanced age I don’t expect to live long enough to see the completion of the bypass route around Princeton. Or around any of the other cities along the 380 route for that matter.

The state is facing some serious property condemnation issues as it seeks to purchase the land on which to carve the new highway. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution does require government to give “just compensation” for property it takes as its own. It’s going to be mighty expensive to build it … you know?

I long have favored development. I want my community to grow and to prosper. I believe Princeton will prosper once the highway gets improved and once the state finishes its bypass project.

But damn! The nightmarish inconvenience of it will make it mighty difficult to anticipate good things when the end of the work arrives.

I believe Princeton needs an identity to give the city a personality. This isn’t quite the ID I anticipated for the city where I choose to live.

Hegseth: an unqualified disaster!

Manning a post that puts someone in charge of the finest miliatary organization in world history requires an individual with immense talent and knowledge of the intricacies of geopolitics.

What did Donald Trump get when he selected Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense? He got a buffoon who has spilled the beans hither and yon about deeply classified military intelligence. Now we hear that Hegseth, the former Fox talking head, has let his phone number be known around the world.

This clown is a threat to the 1.5 million men and women who wear the uniform of this great country.

Hegseth’s top staff is bailing on him. The Pentagon has turned into a clown show. Think about that for a moment: the Pentagon has become a laughingstock!

And why? Because the president of the United States needed a blind loyalist to lead the world’s most lethal military force. He didin’t look for anyone with any smarts, any organizational skill, any sense of the gravity of the information he possessed.

Instead, he hired a dipshit.

And a dangerous one, too!

I guess we can set aside all the crap about his alleged mistreatment of women, or his alleged heavy drinking on the job. Now we need to worry that this moron is blabbing to anyone who will listen about top-secret military matters.

Get him the hell out of there!

Trump’s ‘ratings’ are, um, tanking

Donald J. Trump’s political career has been a testimony to his “ratings,” as he has said himself countless times.

Dude was a reality TV celebrity before becoming a politician, who he knows about ratings. He would boast that his political “ratings” were the best in human history … or words to that effect. He would chide his foes for their “failed ratings.”

We’re now 80-some days into the second term of Trump’s time in office. Know what? Man’s ratings are taking a header off the proverbial cliff.

Makes me wonder: Why is the Dumbass in Chief being so silent about them? No need to answer. I know that the charlatan cares only about news he deems favorable to him. Everything else is “fake,” or is a conspiracy of some sort.

This is what happens when a politician simply doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Meaning that Trump just doesn’t know, for example, that his tariff tantrum is going to result in a national tax increase for every living American.

He and his sidekick, Elon Musk, have set about cutting inspectors general loose, slashing the ranks of national park personnel, Social Security staffers, limiting veterans benefits, slashing foreign aid to countries that need assistance to fend off disease. Oh, and turning this country’s back on an ally in the middle of a ground war with Russia.

I don’t recall Trump ever boasting that he would do all these things while he campaigned for office in 2024. Do you?

Of course not. It’s because the Ignoramus in Chief doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

Declaring victory in this fight

I stand before you today to declare a conditional victory in the war I have been waging … with myself.

About 15 weeks ago, I joined a class of fellow military veterans who reportedly struggled as I have with weight control. I sought professional help because I was unable to come to grips with what I determined was my addiction to comfort food.

I smothered myself in comfort food after I lost my bride, Kathy Anne, to brain cancer a little more than two years ago. I reached out to the Department of Veterans Affairs and  lo and behold, I learned that the VA medical center in Bonham has an online class it teaches to veterans just like me.

So, for the past four months I have been taking this course online with the help of a nutritionist who works for the VA. I learned a great deal on how to curb my impulses, how to control myself and how to change my life.

Therefore, I will declare victory in the “changing of my life” aspect. I have done so!

I know what some of you might be wondering: Have I lost much weight? No. I haven’t. The point is that I am able to maintain control of my impulses by eliminating certain snack foods from my diet. I no longer splurge on sugary treats. I measure my portions of meat and vegetables. I consume increasing amounts of veggies and fruits daily. I am drinking an adequate amount of water.

I am feeling like a million bucks.

I had set an ambitious weight-loss goal at the outset. I didn’t reach the finish line. I have dropped a few pounds, to be sure. However, I am going to keep striving. I feel energized if only by the knowledge that I can change my life and, in fact, have done so.

I feel a certain sense of accomplishment and I just want to share it with those of you who read this blog and know a bit of the struggle my family and I have endured. For me, it came in the form of that damn comfort food.

I am happy to declare victory. The time will come when I can declare a victory without condition. I just need to reach that goal I set. I’ll get there.

Chaos is back in form

There once was a time when Republican politicians seeking to keep the party’s presidential nomination away from the guy who would win it spoke truthfully about the numbskull.

All of them who eventually became MAGA minions blindly loyal to Donald Trump would rant, rave and rail against him.

I harken back to the statement that came from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who called Trump the “chaos candidate.” He predicted in 2016 that Trump would govern in a boiling sea of chaos. That prediction looms quite large for me know as the world watches the way Trump is seeking to make his imprint on a second term as president.

Chaos is back. Bigger and more worrisome than ever!

The worrisome aspect comes from the observation of many that Trump’s team actually is more organized, which I translate to mean that it wants to foment chaos, they do it on purpose. They want to keep Americans and our nation’s allies off balance. They prefer for Trump to act when the spirit moves him. No plan. No strategy. No thought given to the consequences of decisions.

If that doesn’t alarm you, then you’re a MAGA moron. The rest of us, though, have reason to be alarmed beyond measure at the chaos that has made its return to the West Wing.

No explanation needed, Mrs. Obama

Former first lady Michelle Obama finds herself feeling the need to explain why she stayed away from Donald J. Trump’s inauguration.

Allow me this bit of candor. There is not a reason on Earth for Michelle Obama to explain a single thing. Not to me, or to you. Or to anyone.

She stayed away because, in my view, she could not stand the thought of making nice with those who have demonized her, along with her husband and all of the couple’s political friends. What is so mysterious about that? Not a damn thing!

Even more troubling came the whispering about the state of the Obamas’ marriage. OK, she stayed away from Trump’s inauguration. Then she went MIA for the funeral of former President Carter. Her husband was there, along with former President Clinton and President Biden and, of course, the incoming Trump.

Again, Mrs. Obama didn’t need to rework her schedule to fit in a public appearance with Trump. Yet, the questions persisted about the Obamas’ marriage.

Finally, it fell to the former president to declare publicly that he and his wife are fine and that the rest of the world needs to butt the hell out.

Michelle Obama conducted herself with class, grace, good humor and style during her eight years as first lady. She also recognized that as the nation’s first Black presidential couple, she had to do her job to perfection. And she did!

To her everlasting credit, the former first lady responded to pressure to explain her absence from the ceremony involving the return of a totally unfit human being to the presidency. It’s a shame that she deemed it necessary to explain herself.

Toughest job in North Texas? Yeah, probably!

Donald McIntyre’s name possibly isn’t known much outside of Princeton, Texas, where I have lived for the past six years.

I am going out on a limb, though, with this post and declare that McIntyre might have the most challenging public service job in North Texas. He is superintendent of schools of the Princeton Independent School District.

Where is the challenge? Two words sum it up: rapid growth.

Princeton ISD is on the cusp of a growth explosion many of us have never seen. The school system keeps seeking to project what it believes will be its student population in a given academic year only to have those numbers blown apart by reality.

McIntyre — known as Mac to his friends — has to calculate those numbers and present them to the school board to enable the elected board to decide on how to respond to the growth.

A slight bit of personal history. My wife and I moved to Princeton in early 2019. We bought a home here. The population sign at the edge of town said Princeton was home as of the 2010 Census to 6,800 people. The 2020 Census figure was posted and the sign was changed to 17,027 residents. The 2020 Census figure was outdated immediately. Just recently, I heard Princeton City Manager Mike Mashburn say that, based on the number of water meters on line, the city population today stands at about 43,000 residents.

So, from 2010 to 2025, Princeton has grown sevenfold. Wow!

What’s more, most of those new families are bringing children with them. The kids have to attend school. Princeton ISD, therefore, must provide those students a place to learn.

McIntyre must ensure the kids can attend school. He is the chief administrator of a growing public school system and, believe this, he has expressed a hint of frustration at the many challenges he has to confront. The school district’s voters have stood with the district when it asks for money to build the schools it needs. The problem, though, is that the school system cannot build them quickly enough.

The elementary school built in my neighborhood in 2020 had two portable classrooms installed in the first year of its existence because the school had exceeded its capacity.

I want to doff my proverbial cap to Superintendent Don McIntyre for the examplary job he is doing just to keep pace.

My head is spinning!

Seriously! I cannot stop my head from turning round-and-round, the way Linda Blair’s did in “The Exorcist.”

Donald Trump’s tariff tantrum has me so damn dizzy at this point, I am afraid to stand straight up out of fear I am going to topple over. The tariff nonsense is the only explanation I can offer for the way my retirement investment account keeps reacting.

I lose several thousand dollars in one day, then reclaim most of it the following day. The investors who are monkeying around with my money can’t seem to settle on what they think Trump will do next. Then again, I don’t believe Trump knows what he’s going to do!

Over the course of weeks since Trump announced his decision to impose worldwide tariffs on everything this nation imports, people just like me have felt the same dizzyness. If we had a president who knew anything about what he has done, he could cease this nonsense right now.

He took office vowing to preserve and protect our rights. One of them is not written precisely into the Constitution, but I think we have a right to enjoy a retirement without fear of what the president of the United States of America is going to do to cause our retirement funds to take flight.

Is that so hard to understand? Am i being unreasonable to expect the president to stop this tariff horsesh** because he knows the damage he is doing to millions of Americans?

It’s not an unreasonable thing to expect, other than it requires Donald Trump to process hard reality the way most normal people do. This guy ain’t normal. He is way beyond abnormal.

He is certifiably stupid beyond measure.

And this is the guy who got elected president of the United States. Go fu**ing figure.

Ex-POTUSes united in opposition to current guy

We have four living former presidents of the United States, three Democrats and one Republican.

The Democrats all have spoken out loudly and clearly against the policies pitched by the incumbent, a Republican. The current GOP former president hasn’t spoken lately, but we all know that he cannot stomach Donald Trump.

Why is this important? It means that the ex-presidents are forgoing the custom of not speaking ill of their successor. They usually pretend to stand united behind the incumbent. The gloves are off. Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden all have spoken of the destruction that Trump has brought to the economy, to our international alliances and to our national security. President Bush has made his feelings known over the years about Trump, particularly as Trump has criticized the “Thousand Points of Light” program pitched by Bush the Elder.

The former presidents, in my view, are on the right side of history, which I believe is going to provide ample evidence that Trump will stand at the end of his term as arguably the most unfit, unqualified, ill-equipped man ever to take the presidential oath of office.

The former presidents club is among the most exclusive such collections in the world. No one knows the struggles that presidents endure better than the men who have endured them.

They also know a buffoon when they see one. Trump’s buffoonery is in a class by itself.

Trump wishes us a ‘happy Easter’ … sort of

Donald J. Trump has this way with words … consider what he posted on Truth Social today to comemorate the holiest holiday on the Christian calendar.

“Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country,” the president wrote.

What a sweet, heartfelt and faithful thing to say. Right?

I didn’t think you’d buy it either.

That’s how this idiot rolls. He can’t let go of the grievances he holds deep in what passes for his heart.

I just had to share it here to remind the MAGA morons what they got when they returned this guy to office.

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