Gabbard as DNI? Ugghhh!

Tulsi Gabbard, the one-time “far-left Democrat” who switched parties and then backed Donald Trump’s candidacy for POTUS, is the new director of national intelligence.

It’s fair to ask: What would Republicans think of her had she been nominated as DNI by a Democratic president? Today she garnered 52 of 53 GOP votes in the U.S. Senate, with only Mitch McConnell of Kentucky showing a semblance of courage in bucking his party.

Yep, make no mistake that the MAGA wing of the Republican Party — led by the aforementioned POTUS — has taken complete control of a once-great political organization.

Gabbard has no business leading the 18 intelligence-gathering agencies under her command. She cozies up to dictators, such as Vladimir Putin, despite the Russian thug’s illegal and immoral war in Ukraine. She once called whistlebower Edward Snowden a traitor but now wants him pardoned for his treasonous acts.

She is as unreliable a Cabinet official as one can imagine. What’s more, her unreliability puts all of us — you and me — in dire peril.

Today was a dark and dangerous day with Gabbord’s confirmation.

Stunning Oval Office image

The optics from Tuesday’s Oval Office event were stunning in their delivery.

You had Donald J. Trump, the incumbent president of the United States, sitting at the Resolute Desk. To his right was Elon Musk, the billionaire high-tech guru who’s taken on the role of co-POTUS.

Musk pontificated for several minutes about the need — in his mind — to slash billions of dollars from the federal budget. With him was one of his 11 children, sitting on Musk’s shoulders, playing around and acting like a charmiing little boy.

All the while, Trump sat there silently, letting Musk prattle on about what he intends to do to make government more efficient.

Wait just a second, shall we?

Who in the world was elected president in November? It damn sure wasn’t Musk, a foreign-born richest man on Earth. Trump got more votes than his opponent.

And yet … the incumbent president sat at his desk, acting for all the world like a bit player in a scheme to restructure the nature of our democratic republic.

Of course, we need to understand that Musk has Trump’s blessing to take center stage. Still, the Oval Office image is beyond weird.

It scares me sh**less!

Another public task snatched away

Another opportunity to serve my community has been taken away from me … not by a government denying me the right to serve, but the lack of need for the service I intended to provide.

I waited all day to learn whether I needed to report for jury duty Wednesday morning at the Collin County Courthouse jury room over yonder in McKInney.

Then came the message. My services aren’t needed. There will be no need for a jury.

I’ll be frank. The news disappoints me. I want to serve on a trial jury. I realize it’s the luck of the draw that determines whether I get the chance. Every time I have received a jury summons in Texas — whether in Jefferson or Randall counties, and now in Collin County — district clerk staff has waved me off.

I know none of this really is huge news to those who are reading this post. I want to share with you, however, that I keep reading reports from district and county clerks that they often cannot seat enough people for juries when the need arises.

Texas offers a variety of reasons for people to excuse themselves from jury duty. One of them provides a permanent recusal for old folks like me. I reckon the state figures that some of us might not live long enough to report for duty once we get the summons.

I am 75 years of age. My hope that a permanent recusal would not be because I wouldn’t live long enough to serve. One of my life’s goals has been to serve on a trial jury. We all think we know what goes on when 12 people deliberate over a verdict in a case … but we don’t know until we’ve been in the room. I want to learn what happens when they shut the door.

It won’t happen this time. Maybe it will the next time I get the call to serve the cause of delivering justice.

Judiciary under attack

Our nation’s founders had this notion that today seems rather quaint that lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary would shield judges from the kind of political pressure that dogs members of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

The concept worked quite well. Then came the MAGA movement, Donald Trump and now the actual threat of impeachment of federal judges who rule against the Trumpian view of the world.

Holy crap!

A federal judge in Rhode Island has ruled that Trump must unfreeze federal money appropriated by Congress. His actions to stop payments violate the U.S. Constitution, said the judge. The MAGA response? Well, we’ll just see about that, they say. MAGA morons are reportedly lobbying their allies in Congress to impeach the judge because he had the stones to speak truth to the morons who think they can ignore the Constitution at will.

The first three articles in the Constitution dealt, in order, with legislative power, executive power and judicial power. The founders seemingly believed that Congress deserved top billing, thus delineating its authority in Article I. Therefore, when Congress authorizes the expenditure of public money, that authority cannot be challenged by tinhorn politicians.

Trump is seeking to rewrite the Constitution by flouting the authority it grants to Congress … and to the courts. The Rhode Island judge noted specifically that Trump has ignored earlier court rulings and said point-blank that he must be found in contempt of the court. Indeed, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his year-end review of the court said that any effort to defy the courts must be stopped.

You want a constitutional crisis? I believe we might have them on several fronts, each of which would make Watergate and the Trump-incited insurrection look like a game of horseshoes.

We are the ‘United States of America’ … yes?

While listening to congressional Republicans preen and prance over the conditions they demand for disaster aid to California fire victims, I am reminded of a speech delivered in 2004 by a young upstart politician from Illinois.

State Sen. Barack Obama delivered the Democratic Party convention keynote speech in Boston. He told conventioneers that this nation doesn’t comprise “red states or blue states,” but said “we are the United States of America.”

So it should always be, particularly when Americans are in dire peril recovering from disasters such as those wildfires that have ravaged southern California. Recall, too, that when hurricanes destroyed much of North and South Carolina, and Florida — all regions that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 — Democratic President Joe Biden didn’t hesitate in sending disaster aid to those states.

Such magnanimity isn’t on display these days as Republicans led by Donald Trump attach conditions to disaster aid aimed at helping Californians who live in a state that voted heavily for Biden in 2020 and Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.

Is this a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats seemingly put partisanship aside when the call goes out for aid to all Americans regardless of whom they support at the ballot box. Republicans, though, seemingly make up conditions for aid to deliver to those Americans who vote the other way at election time.

Barack Obama had it right in 2004. We’re supposed to all live within the United States of America.

Perverts misconstrue patriotism

So much of Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House offends me at almost every level imaginable, but one offense stands out among all the others.

It’s the notion that Trump appeals to Americans’ sense of “patriotism,” that those who adhere to this clown’s world view — such as it is — are more “patriotic” than the rest of us.

Wow!

I have some news for them, but it’s not an original thought from this patriot. It has come from many others. However, since I have this forum from which I can vent, I will do so with glee and gusto.

The perverts who slander the real patriots of this great nation contend that the Jan. 6, 2021 was an act of “peaceful protest.” Their president calls it a demonstration of “love.” My world view suggests that anyone who attacks a sworn police officer, who defecates on the Capitol grounds, who threatens to hang the sitting vice president is guilty of treason.

Donald Trump pardoned those individuals without regard to the nature of the crimes they committed. He has populated the executive branch of government with a collection of unfit and unqualified individuals.

Trump vows to sic the Justice Department on members of the media for their coverage of the events leading to and including the insurrection. He wants to prosecute career prosecutors for doing their jobs under the law.

And he is cheered every step of the way by the perverts who claim to be patriots.

Allow me to stand before you and declare with the fullest voice I can summon that I am a patriot. I pay my taxes willingly. I have worn the uniform of the U.S. Army and have gone into a war zone to serve my country. I cherish the sound of our National Anthem. I am the grandson of immigrants who chose to live in this great and glorious land and I am the son of a man who enlisted in the Navy on the very day this country fought back against the sneak attack on our forces in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

I also know this country has its faults. Our journey from our declaration of independence has hit a few bumps along the way. I also know that the founders sought to build a “more perfect Union,” but they knew they never could create “the perfect” nation.

I will not tolerate the idea that those who follow the idiocy preached by Donald John Trump are patriots. They do not know the meaning of the word.

This news hurts … seriously

I am at the age of my life where I spend time looking at obituaries … just to see which of my friends and acquaintances have gone on to reap their great reward.

I did so again today — and got the shock of my life!

Inside the obituary page of the Amarillo Globe-News was news that a former marketing director for the newspaper had died at age 65. Her name was Jo Tyler Bagwell.

Jo was not famous outside of Amarillo — or Claude, where she grew up and attended high school. However, this woman was a force of nature. I first made her acquaintance when she worked in the marketing department of a local bank; I met her a day or two after I moved to Amarillo in January 1995 to start my job at the Globe-News. We hit it off immediately.

I want to pay a brief tribute to this woman because she was, to borrow a phrase, the “complete package.” She was physically attractive, but she also was a kind, generous, gregarious, charming, smart individual. She was a devoted Aggie.

Above and beyond all of that, she was a proud and devoted mother to her son, Blake, who many of us watched grow into a wonderful man.

I once told Jo that she was an angel put on Earth by God to care for Blake, who was born with myriad challenges, but who overcame them to blossom into the fine man he has become. He owes everything to his mother.

Many years have passed since I last spoke with Jo Bagwell. She struggled through the last stages of her life on Earth. I am saddened beyond every emotion I can summon at the news I saw today. At my age of 75 I am going to keep looking at obituaries to keep up with the rite of passage we all must face eventually.

Damn, I do not want to be surprised soon in the manner this news hit me like a punch in the gut.

Stop the Musk train wreck!

Elon Musk must be stopped cold, ending the charade he is leading as some sort of federal budgetary guru advising Donald J. Trump on what to cut from the government.

The man is out of fu**ing control! Period!

Musk is a zillionaire who is spawning movements across the country to remind our gutless wonders in Congress that Americans did not elect this foreign-born high-tech mogul to the nation’s highest office. Americans elected Trump to a second term. Trump has willfully handed the reins of budgetary power to Musk, who once shared that duty with Vivek Ramaswamy, who has mysteriously disappeared.

Musk now is on his own, pitching budget slashes that would leave millions of Americans helpless against forces they cannot fight without the federal government.

I never thought I would say this, but here goes: I am beginning to wish Trump would jerk this clown into place, reminding him that he hasn’t been elected to anything. Trump needs to remind Elon Musk that he — Trump! — is the elected politician who’s in charge and that Musk needs to play second fiddle to the man who holds the title of president of the United States of America.

Pundits already have projected a tenuous relationship between Trump and Musk. Some of them have predicted that Musk won’t last a year as head of that thing called the Department of Government Efficiency. Now it’s called DOGE.

DOGE doesn’t have any constitutional authority to act as its daddy, Elon Musk, is trying to do. Budgetary responsibility rests with Congress, which disposes of ideas that the president proposes.

Elon Musk is a pretender who needs to be stopped!

Cast of clowns nearly finished

It looks as though Donald J. Trump’s cast of clowns and kooks assembled for the executive branch of the federal government is about complete.

All that’s left, apparently, is for the FBI director-designate, Kash Patel, to squeak through his committee hearing and then he’ll be confirmed likely by a party-line vote in the Senate.

Oh … my. Spare me the anguish.

Trump has picked an array of goofballs, kooks, outright numbskulls to lead agencies that are supposed to carry out the bidding of Congress.

Except that Congress has been compromised beyond immediate repair by the gutless wonders who comprise the Republican majority in both legislative chambers. I keep waiting for someone, anyone, among the GOP majority to stand up to Trump, to tell him the unvarnished truth … which is that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing!

He imposes tariffs on major international trading partners, then backs off. He issues orders to furloughs to tens of thousands of federal employees, then backs off of that order, too. He fires inspectors general and orders probes into anyone who worked on the probe into the Jan. 6 insurrection that he incited.

The confirmation hearings related to Patel, DNI-designate Tulsi Gabbard, health secretary RFK Jr. were too painful to watch.

Courage is MIA in the Senate and in the House. The slim majorities in both chambers just cannot summon a modicum of courage to stand up to Trump, to tell him the truth. Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that speaking truth to Trump is the only way to prevent him (hopefully) from bullying you.

The cast of clowns with whom he has surrounded himself is now set to take over the executive branch … more or less. Trump still has his unelected sidekick, Elon Musk, issuing directives about how the government should spend our money.

Good ever-lovin’ grief, man.

Trump 2.0 worse than before

The second version of Donald Trump’s foray into national governance is turning out to be the nightmare so many of us feared it would become.

He has enlisted the aid of a zillionaire who’s moved into an office in White House, a guy who is making decisions without any authorization from Congress or the courts.

Now we have Trump himself declaring his intention to “take over” the Gaza region that’s been torn apart by the war between Israel and the terrorists known as Hamas. He well might send U.S. troops to oversee the takeover of a sovereign land … and to think this moron was elected while promising to end warfare as we have known it.

Trump’s hatchet man wants to dismantle the Department of Education. There’s no plan for what we can do to shore up public education. Nor is there a plan for how to govern effectively by slashing bazillions of dollars from the federal government.

Confusion anyone? Chaos?

Dude imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada, only to pull them back after those countries bitched their way out from them. China, the third tariff target, is imposing tariffs of its own against U.S. products.

Give me some relief from this madness. Make no mistake, it’s sheer and unalterated madness coming from the West Wing.

I hope the 77 million Americans who cast their ballots for this dipsh** are happy with what they’re getting. The other half of the country and I are not.

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