local news, State news

Fruitcake fringe loses an AG candidate

Well, now. It looks as though Louie Gohmert is going to have the fruitcake fringe of the Republican Party electorate to himself as he challenges Ken Paxton in next year’s GOP primary for Texas attorney general.

Why is that? Another GOP fruitcake, Freedom Caucus member state Rep. Matt Krause of Fort Worth is going to run instead for Tarrant County district attorney. He had sought to run in the 2022 primary for Texas AG, but switched races.

Gohmert is still in. He joins Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman as challengers to the felony indicted Paxton, who is awaiting trial in state court on a charge of securities fraud.

Bush and Guzman are campaigning specifically against the corruption that Paxton brought with him to the AG’s office in 2015. I don’t know what U.S. Rep. Gohmert’s platform will be; he might want to push Paxton even farther to the right than he already stands.

There might be more entries, given the trouble that keeps swirling around Paxton. The FBI is conducting an independent investigation into allegations of corruption with his office; several top legal assistants quit earlier this year while citing allegations of improper behavior by the attorney general. Imagine that, will ya?

The waters are still roiling.

It’s gonna be fun to watch this race play out.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Who killed JFK?

Many mainstream media observers have talked over the past couple of days while commemorating the 58th year since President Kennedy’s murder in Dallas about the right-wing conspiracy theories that permeate our politics to this day.

They have noted the John Birch Society’s brochures printed at the time of JFK’s visit to Dallas that accused the president of surrendering U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations, of appointing “anti-Christians” to government posts. It’s pretty standard right-wing wacko stuff.

Indeed, in the time leading up to the visit to Texas in 1963, there was considerable concern expressed by those close to the president about the perceived threats to him from the far-right wing of political thought.

However, let’s hold on and take a brief look at what happened on that day.

Who killed the president on that glorious Dallas day as he rode in the motorcade through downtown en route to the Dallas Trade Mart where he was to deliver a speech that afternoon?

The cops arrested a card-carrying Marxist named Lee Harvey Oswald. He was seen in the book depository building and captured later at the Texas Theater after he killed a Dallas police officer, J.D. Tippitt.

It seems, to me at least, that the authorities were looking the other way when this loser Oswald managed to change the course of world history with three rifle shots from the sixth floor of the Dallas office structure.

Why don’t the media talk about that tragic twist of fate?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Waiting for ‘the beef’

The latest round of public opinion polling on the 2022 Texas governor’s race sent a glaring message to me.

It goes like this: Matthew McConaughey polls stronger against Gov. Greg Abbott than Beto O’Rourke. Why? Because Texans don’t know a damn thing about McConaughey other than he won a best actor Oscar not many years ago for his role in “Dallas Buyers Club.”

O’Rourke has been on the national political stage since 2018 when he nearly defeated Sen. Ted Cruz in the race for Cruz’s U.S. Senate seat. Abbott, too, is now a well-known and highly chronicled political figure.

McConaughey? I don’t even know if he’s going to run for governor as a Democrat or Republican. He has been playing coy about the party under which he would run.

Indeed, the actor — a native of Texas who lives in the Austin area — has been coy about his views on an array of issues: immigration, public school curriculum, abortion, voting rights, gun violence and gun owners’ rights, climate change, energy production … stop me before I go bananas, OK?

I strongly suspect that when — or if — McConaughey starts laying out some specifics we are going to see some movement in those polls as it regards whether he stands a chance of becoming the state’s next governor.

For now, Texans seem to consider McConaughey a bit of a mystery man, albeit a dashing mystery man.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Is the SUV color that vital?

The media keep repeating something that has me wondering about its relevance and importance.

An SUV plowed through a Christmas festival crowd in Waukesha, Wisc., over the weekend. Five people died. Dozens more were injured. Many of the injured are children and several of those children are in ICU and are listed in critical condition. Our hearts break for the victims and pray that the injured recover.

But why are the media reporting constantly that the SUV is a red vehicle? “A red SUV drove at a high rate of speed … “ And so it goes.

Is the color of the vehicle so relevant that it matters in reporting on this human tragedy? Someone needs to explain it to me. Please.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news, State news

Texas’s newest residents get stiffed

Texas is going to get two more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Why? Because our state grew significantly during the past 10 years.

The population boom was fueled by more African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians flocking to the state. The word is that these folks generally vote Democratic. So, it was believed that the state’s changing demography was going to make the state more, um, divided politically.

Well, the Legislature took care of that by gerrymandering the new congressional and legislative districts to ensure that the Republican Party maintains its chokehold on power.

The Legislature takes command of the redistricting effort every decade. The 2020 census shows the state achieving additional power in Congress with those two new seats. However, Republicans are big winners, given the way the Legislature reconfigured all those boundaries.

Collin County, where I now reside, was turned into an even heavier GOP-friendly place; Collin County voted narrowly for Donald Trump in 2020, but would have voted significantly more for the ex-POTUS had the new borders been in effect.

I am scratching my noodle on this one. Is this the way “representative democracy” is supposed to work?

I think not.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Fox News takes needed hit

The liars at Fox News have been given notice by two of their contributors, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, that they — the contributors — will not tolerate the lies broadcast by Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson.

Goldberg and Hayes said they cannot stand with the network after it broadcast Carlson’s special on the 1/6 insurrection. Carlson called it “Patriot Purge,” and according to Goldberg and Hayes — two leading conservative thinkers and columnists — the program was full of lies, distortions and unfounded conspiracy rumors. They won’t be part of a network that allows such lying to go unchallenged.

Good for them.

To be honest, I didn’t watch it. I don’t need to watch what I know it contains. I have heard Carlson spew much of the trash I know he poured into the production of “Patriot Purge.”

According to The Wrap: Carlson’s “Patriot Purge” has drawn sharp criticism since its launch, with the Anti-Defamation League calling on Fox News to cancel it. “Let’s call this what it is: an abject, indisputable lie, and a blatant attempt to rewrite history,” ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a letter addressed to Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch. Greenblatt expressed alarm that the “false narrative and wild conspiracy theories” presented in “Patriot Purge” could “sow further division” and possibly “animate violence.”

Fox News has given itself ample reason to be ashamed of itself. Carlson’s phony documentary is just one more example of the lies that pour forth from a network that once boasted to be “fair and balanced.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

Despise the separation between the parties

One of the many things I detest about the state of the contemporary political climate in Texas is the absence of a sense of statewide camaraderie among the state’s congressional delegation.

There once was a time, back when Fort Worth’s Jim Wright was speaker of the U.S. House, when the entire Texas delegation would meet for breakfast each week. Democrats and Republicans would gather to discuss issues common to everyone within the delegation. They sought a meeting of their collective minds on ways to solve Texas problems.

My own congressman at the time, the late Democrat Jack Brooks, spoke fondly — if that’s a word I could use to describe anything that came from that cantankerous politician’s mouth — of the fellowship the delegation would enjoy.

I remember a story I read in Congressional Quarterly about those meetings and how they contrasted with the bitterness that existed between Democrats and Republicans in the California delegation. The Texans sought common ground. Californians drifted apart, firing rhetorical sniper shots at each other.

The Texas delegation no longer meets regularly, as I understand it. Democrats and Republicans are at each other’s throats most of the time. It’s a common affliction most if not all state delegations in Congress. I’m trying to imagine ultraconservative Louie Gohmert sitting next to ultraliberal Lloyd Doggett hashing out a legislative solution to anything.

I hear that my own House member, Republican Van Taylor of Plano, works well with Democrats. He has sponsored bipartisan legislation and actually counts Democrats among his friends in Washington. That, I dare say, is a commendable thing to have happen. I attribute that to his combat experience in the Middle East while serving in the Marine Corps. Everyone becomes your best friend when you’re receiving enemy fire and you depend on the guy next to you … who likewise is depending on you to have his back.

There needs to be much more of that and much less of the sniping, backbiting, name-calling and actual threats of violence about which we hear these days.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Texas Democrats take another gut punch

Ryan Guillen no longer is a Democrat, having switched party affiliation to Republican.

That’s a big deal? You betcha. Especially  when the party-switcher is a longtime Democratic legislator from South Texas who told his former party leaders that the Democratic Party has abandoned him; so he is becoming a Republican.

This is grim news for Texas Democratic Party officials who keep telling the world about how the tide in Texas is turning from Republican Red to Democratic Blue. But … is it?

RealClearPolitics reports: While Guillen is a state lawmaker whose switch won’t impact which party holds power in Washington, there’s one sign that this may not be an isolated example: At least nine congressional House Democrats have  announced they are not seeking reelection next year. More are expected to follow.

As for the impact on the state’s political fortunes, Guillen’s switcheroo seems to portend something ominous for a party that contends the changing Texas demography suggests that Democrats are on the rise and Republicans are sinking.

I am not so sure about that. Just yet anyway.

Guillen is a Texas Latino who believes the Democratic Party has taken him for granted along with those who share his ethnicity.

Texas Party Switcher Is Latest Ominous Sign for Democrats | RealClearPolitics

I used to call the Golden Triangle home. The Triangle is in deep Southeast Texas, where Democrats until the early 1990s continued to occupy virtually every county elected office in sight. That began changing about the time I moved from Beaumont to the other corner of the state, in Republican-heavy Amarillo.

Republicans now occupy every statewide office in Texas and a heavy majority of the local offices as well. Dallas County, next door to us in our new home in Collin County, remains a heavily Democratic bastion.

So, if Democrats intend to regain any semblance of influence in Texas, they need to heed the admonition of one of its veteran former legislative representatives: stop taking your core constituency for granted.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Once more about young Kyle Rittenhouse

OK. I just gotta weigh in with another thought about Kyle Rittenhouse before I move on to, oh, something else.

The young man heard about this protest occurring in Kenosha, Wis. What did he do? He got into his car and drove from neighboring Pleasant Prairie to the city on the Lake Michigan shore. He had an AR-15 and some ammo that he had put into the magazine.

He pranced along the street with the weapon and shot two men to death. Rittenhouse was arrested and charged with murder. He pleaded not guilty and went to trial, where he claimed — while sobbing — that he shot the men while defending himself against their attack on him. Self-defense, he said.

The jury believed him. Rittenhouse’s legal team did a stellar job of making him something of a sympathetic character. To be honest, it looked to me — based on what I heard and read — that the defense team out-lawyered the prosecutors.

So, young Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted.

I am still struck by the notion that he went to Kenosha in the first place as a 17-year-old looking to mix it up with protesters complaining about police brutality against African-Americans. He found what he seemed to be looking for; two men paid the price for their encounter with Rittenhouse.

I’ll accept the jury’s verdict, not because I necessarily endorse the defense narrative he delivered. I accept the verdict because I have a strong belief in our jury trial system.

However, if the kid had just stayed home and not rushed onto the Kenosha streets with that AR-15. He went looking for trouble and he found it.

I am out!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS to get kicked around?

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Mitch McConnell has demonstrated a clear ability — and a tendency — to play hardball politics whenever the need arises in his own pointed head.

Think about how the Senate Republican leader can manipulate things in the event the GOP takes control of the U.S. Senate after the 2022 midterm election.

Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer might retire from the court. Say, he does so at the end of the current term, which arrives in late June or early July 2022. President Biden has to select a nominee immediately after such a retirement occurs. McConnell well might decide to throw up roadblocks anticipating a GOP takeover of the Senate in November 2022.

What might occur, then, if the GOP wins a Senate majority, seats a new Senate in January 2023 and Biden’s SCOTUS nominee still hasn’t had a hearing, let alone a vote? I’ll tell you what’ll happen. The GOP-led Senate could scuttle a Biden choice and then McConnell could decide to replay the tactic he used in 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly. President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the court, but McConnell torpedoed the nomination, refusing to grant Garland a hearing. Why? Because we had an election months away and McConnell said the next president deserved the right to select someone. The next president happened to be Donald J. Trump and, well, you know the rest of it.

This all seems to give a Breyer decision on whether he stays on the court a good bit more of a time urgency. I don’t expect Justice Breyer to act on the wishes of others around him. He is entitled to walk away on his own terms and on his own schedule.

The nation’s highest court, though, does not need or deserve to be kicked around like the political football some in the Senate have made it out to be.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience