national news

Some matters escape me

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Try as I do to stay ahead of the public policy curve, it continues to boggle my occasionally thick-skulled noggin just how Donald Trump continues to manipulate the MAGA cult that follows him off the cliff and into the sewer.

I told a dear friend today that Trump’s duplicity and hypocrisy seems to go over the vacuous heads of the MAGAites who think the guy is the best thing in politics since pockets on shirts.

Consider two elements in this moron’s narrative. Fake news and “rigged elections.”

He routinely blasts the media for putting “fake news” into print and on the air. And yet … this the very dimwit who fomented the former Big Lie about Barack Obama’s place of birth. He rode that pony until he realized, I reckon, that it was no longer useful to him. He accused Obama of being from Kenya and, thus, was constitutionally ineligible to run for president.

I shook my head in disbelief … not so much that he kept saying it but at the cult’s willingness to buy into it. They weren’t smart enough to call the dipsh** out on his lie.

Now for the rigged election. He said the 2020 result that elected Joe Biden over Trump was “rigged.” He said it was corrupt. He sicced the mob on the Capitol on Jan. 6 to stop the peaceful transfer of power to the Biden administration.

And yet … here he is four years later plotting to rig this very election through the use of 2020 election deniers holding key state and local election offices.

What’s more, he still won’t commit categorically to accepting the 2024 election results even if Kamala Harris defeats him soundly.

Politicians generally are thought to shade the truth on occasion, I get it. This guy? I cannot believe a single, solitary sentence that pours out of his overfed pie hole as the truth.

Trump is the embodiment of fake news and rigged elections. We must not forget that when we troop to our polling stations later this year.

media news, national news

Harris, Walz seek to clear the air

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Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic Party presidential ticket, have been criticized unfairly because they haven’t been interviewed extensively by the national media.

Oh, my ….

Republicans have seized on this as a campaign talking point, suggesting that Harris and Walz are too afraid to field “tough questions” from the media on their various policy positions.

They will be put to the test Thursday when they sit with CNN anchor Dana Bash.

This is a bit of a gamble for Harris and Walz. Why? Because Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, their GOP foes, are going to allege — and you can take this to the bank — that they were given softball questions. Trump plays that joker card all the time. Vance, the loyal VP nominee, no doubt will buy into that specious notion.

I continue to hold Harris and Walz in the highest esteem. They have energized their Democratic Party. Harris’s sudden and dramatic emergence as the frontrunner after President Biden ended his candidacy has been a sight to behold.

If I were to place a wager on why the delay, I would suggest that Harris and Walz needed some time to hone their policy positions before facing the national media. Harris only has been running for president for a few weeks and Walz, well, came out of virtual nowhere to emerge as her VP running mate.

Will Bash challenge Harris and Walz if they lie to us? You can bet your oldest child that she will.

I long have thought of Dana Bash as a journalism pro. She is there to seek the truth. Whether the candidates deliver the whole truth likely will be determined by the bias of those Americans who will watch … and listen.

local news, political news

We aren’t a battleground yet

Democrats in the state where I have lived for the past 40 years keep crowing about how we are becoming a “battleground state” for the candidates seeking the U.S. presidency.

Spoiler alert: Texas is not a battleground state. At least not in this election cycle.

How do I know that? Because if we truly were up for grabs, we would be seeing Kamala Harris and her Republican opponent as frequently as they are being seen in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia.

It’s not happening. At least not yet.

Now, this isn’t intended to denigrate my wish that we would become a place where Democrats can compete statewide against Republicans. We’re inching closer to that day.

In 2020, Joe Biden lost Texas to Donald Trump by about 5 percentage points. That is tantalizingly close to the margin of error in most reputable political polls. I live in Collin County, just northeast of Dallas County, which — and this might be difficult to believe — has become a Democratic stronghold. 

Yes, I was aware that a lot of Democrats got all wound up when Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced he is a Republican. My reaction: B … F … D! He is elected mayor as a non-partisan; that’s all that should matter to the residents who are concerned about potholes and police protection.

I am going to presume that Trump will get Texas’s 40 electoral votes. I will be curious and anxious to see how the final results roll in.

If only Kamala Harris could get it through the thick and vacuous skulls of the MAGA cultists here about the danger of putting Trump anywhere near the Resolute Desk. If we continue to close the gap between Ds and Rs, then I might be able to accept that our days as a battleground state are closer than I fear at this moment.

environmental news

‘Hint of fall?’ Hah!

Leave it to my friend and former colleague Jon Mark Beilue to dig up a clever quip to discuss the, um, weather.

“You know it’s hot,” Jon Mark said recently, on a social media post, “when it’s 91 degrees outside and you think the air has the ‘hint of fall.'”

Indeed, it’s been broiling in Amarillo, where Jon Mark lives. I saw recently where it hit 108 degrees up yonder. and that’s not counting the dreaded “heat index” or “feels like” temperature!

I’m happy to report that North Texas might soon be feeling that “hint of fall in the air” as well. I saw recently that the temperatures will top out later this week at “only” 90, with the projected high temp slated to each 82ish over the weekend.

We’ve been hot as hell here, too, with several consecutive days at more than 100 degrees. The TV weathermen and women seem to have run out of creative ways to tell us the obvious: stay hydrated and look for shade whenever possible. 

But … hey, we know what Texas summers are like. They are hot, man!

I will just have to look forward to the eventual cooling of the temperatures around here and then keep my trap shut when they linger at or below freezing in the middle of winter.

national news

It’s the brevity … stupid!

Just suppose for a moment or two what the public reaction to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign would be had she been in the hunt for, oh, the past year and a half.

Do you think we’d still be as excited about the energy the vice president has brought to the race? Would she wear us out with her exuberance, her enthusiasm, her energy?

I want to offer a notion that might not go over well among some readers of this blog. It is that Harris’s late entry into the campaign after President Biden pulled out of the race has filled the air with excitement that might not have the staying power that many of the VP’s allies say it would.

Vice President Harris launched her campaign from a dead stop with fewer than 100 days to go before Election Day. Joe Biden’s horrible debate performance got tongues wagging about his mental acuity. He stood firm, said he would stay in, then, in an instant he was gone.

Harris stepped up with the wind blowing hard at her back.

Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are in a dead sprint toward the finish line, which is just 70 days from now. My strong hope is that Harris and Walz win, that they vanquish Donald Trump and JD Vance to history’s dust bin and then deliver on the myriad promises they are making.

A part of me, though, just might always wonder if the brevity of this campaign could have been the decisive factor in her victory.

Whatever. A win is a win.

political news

Biden made unprecedented move

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I want to bask for just a little while longer in the afterglow of the Democratic National Convention, which wrapped up Thursday and sent its presidential and vice-presidential nominees to fight the Republican ticket.

My point is to echo the praise we heard from the convention podium about the selflessness exhibited by President Joe Biden as he dropped his re-election bid, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him … and he did this on his own.

I won’t quibble or quarrel over what motivated him to take that dramatic action. Biden said he loves being president but added quickly that “I love my country more.”

Indeed, when you ponder it for just a moment, the act of voluntarily giving up political power has to rank as one of the most improbable acts imaginable.

Could the president reverse his political fortune and defeated the GOP ticket? I believe it was possible. The seamless handoff to Kamala Harris, though, has energized Democrats beyond all expectation.

I also agree with Biden about the imperativeness of keeping Donald Trump away from the Resolute Desk … forever!

If that was Joe Biden’s primary motivation in surrendering power, then I’m all in on that effort.  I also join others who have hailed this act as one of high political courage.

As former President Obama said at the end of his stemwinding speech at the DNC: Let’s get to work!

national news

RFK Jr. betrays his family

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Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. should be damn glad his father cannot emerge from the ground at Arlington National Cemetery and give his son the whoopin’ he has earned.

Kennedy decided to suspend his presidential campaign and then did the unthinkable: He endorsed the Republican Party’s twice-impeached, four-times-indicted, convicted felon nominee for president of the United States … Donald Trump.

Junior, the scion of the nation’s premier family of partisan Democrats, turned his back on the principles championed by his forebears, namely his father, Robert F. Kennedy, his uncles JFK and Sen. Edward Kennedy and a host of aunts, siblings and cousins.

I am scratching my noggin over this endorsement. So help me, it makes zero sense.

RFK Jr. long has fancied himself as a man of action. He developed a nice environmental law practice and has been at the forefront of environmental causes almost since his graduation from law school. Trump doesn’t give a rat’s rear end about the environment.

And yet RFK Jr. is now backing the disgraced former POTUS.

What does RFK Jr.’s endorsement mean in terms of the election outcome? Probably not enough to matter. I won’t waste any time seeking to evaluate that particular consequence.

I only can imagine what Junior’s sainted mother, Ethel, must be thinking as she watches her son spit in the face of her beloved husband and throw his support behind a moron who stands before the nation and the world as the Republicans’ only nominee ever convicted of multiple felonies.

I may never catch my breath over this one!

military news

This ‘sucker’ fires back

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As I look back over the past four days of the Democratic National Convention and its myriad examples of Donald Trump’s unfitness for public office, I am drawn to the one area that hits me right where I live.

It is Trump’s disrespect for those of us who have donned our nation’s military uniform. I am one of those “suckers” and “losers” who answered the call to duty when it arrived at my parents’ mailbox one hot summer day in July 1968. Uncle Sam summoned me to duty … and so I went to do as I was ordered to do.

Trump didn’t do that very thing. He avoided service through those infamous bone spurs.

The DNC highlighted — or “lowlighted,” if you prefer — Trump’s utter disdain for those of us who did serve. Former GOP U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois stood before the convention and decried Trump’s disrespect for him. So did U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, a candidate for the Senate in Arizona — who brought along a number of veterans to embrace his condemnation of Trump. So did Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former Navy pilot and former astronaut.

Then we had former Defense Secretary, former CIA director, former congressman Leon Panetta echo all of that as well.

Trump never should have donned the commander in chief’s mantle in the first place and he damn sure should never assume that role ever again.

The men and women who serve in our military deserve to have complete trust in their commander in chief. Vice President Kamala Harris, nominated last night to confront Mr. Bone Spurs in this year’s campaign for the White House, pledged to maintain and support the world’s most “lethal” fighting force if she is elected president.

She also has pledged to protect all the “pre-paid” benefits our veterans have earned through their service to the nation we love beyond all measure.

I believe in Kamala Harris’s commitment to those who continue to serve with honor, distinction and valor.

local news

Complex isn’t coming down after all … yet!

I guess I got a bit ahead of myself in suggesting that demolition work had begun on that monstrosity of an apartment complex on US 380 in Princeton.

The Princeton Housing Standards Authority — aka the City Council — voted 3-2 Thursday evening to order completion of several rotting structures, even as crews began razing three buildings “to the slab.”  Even those structures, deemed irreparable, could come back to life.

I don’t know about the wisdom of that decision.

The complex has sat there unfinished for more than a year, exposed to North Texas’s occasionally harsh weather. Mold and water damage run rampant through the 300-unit apartment complex.

The developer has a deadline to get the work done. Some buyers are lined up to possibly purchase the site next to Wal-Mart on the south side of US 380.

Folks, it still looks like a mess to me.

I’ll have more to say later on the location and whether it is even wise to have such a huge apartment complex on a thoroughfare that already is choked with stand-still traffic.

Sorry I jumped the gun.

local news

Monstrosity on its way down!

All the yammering around Princeton regarding that 300-unit apartment complex that has gone to serious seed must have been heard by those who needed to hear it.

I just noticed crews at work taking down several of the buildings. And this is in advance of a public meeting set for this evening at Princeton Municipal Complex to discuss the future of the site.

It looks to me as if its future might have been decided. The demolition underway involves the razing of three structures deemed damaged beyond repair. There’s too much mold and water damage to the buildings to save them. So … they’re coming down!

The City Council is meeting as the city’s Housing Standards Authority. It will discuss the various — and numerous — code violations that render the site unworkable.

I am one of many Princeton residents who is delighted to see the work commence to rid the city of this monumental eyesore created when the contractor walked off the job after getting into a snit with the developer.

We’ll just have to stand by while the work continues and see what in the name of civic improvement occurs with the site on US 380.

Keep pounding away, fellas.

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