Category Archives: national news

national news, political news

Yes, block GOP effort to redraw boundaries

This will surprise no one who reads this blog regularly … but I am going to back Texas legislative Democrats’ efforts to stop the Legislature’s Republican majority from redrawing the state’s congressional districts to ensure the election of even more GOP members to Congress.

Democrats who comprise the Legislature’s minority have fled the state. At least 51 Texas Democrats are holed up somewhere to prevent a House vote on a plan urged by Donald Trump and endorsed by his GOP pals Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to re-jigger boundaries to bolster the Republican majority in the U.S. House.

This reapportionment matter takes place every decade when the Census is taken. It falls on the Legislature to redraw these lines. I remember the late state Sen. Teel Bivins, an Amarillo Republican, bemoaning the task. He said it gave legislative Republicans a “chance to eat their young.” I still am not sure what he meant by that, but I took it to mean partly that he didn’t like having to redraw the lines.

It’s not clear to me or to many others how long this strategy will hold up. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton calls Democrats “cowards” for shirking their duty. He vows to arrest them, although leaving the state in this fashion is a civil offense, so arresting legislators remains an iffy proposition.

Legislators have tried this before. Previous walkouts have ended when Democrats who vowed to hang tough forever gave in, enabling Republicans to get their way.

I am just aghast that Donald Trump would encourage this form of political bullying and I am delighted that Texas Democrats — so far! — are standing firm in opposition to this interference in Texas politics.  

national news, national security

Gabbard and the ‘t’ word

Some words need never to be said given the extreme weight of what they mean … unless the object of that word has done something that deserves its use.

Former President Barack Obama has been called, essentially, a traitor to the nation he served for more than a decade. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard tossed the word “treason” out during a discussion of what she was “proof” that Obama fiddled with intelligence reports that accuse Russia of meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Gabbard doesn’t possess a shred of proof of that accusation. Instead of fixing like a laser on actual national security concerns, Gabbard is relitigating the 2016 election … which, I hasten to add, Donald Trump won! Trump garnered more Electoral College votes than Hillary Clinton. Period. Full stop. And all that rhetorical nonsense.

So, what the hell is Gabbard doing by seeking to bring up an issue that has been decided? Oh, wait! I know why! She wants to divert our attention from the Jeffrey Epstein matter and whether the late Epstein and Trump were besties during the time Epstein was shopping for underage girls to pawn off on clients in a sex trafficking scheme.

Gabbard is running amok with dangerous language that she should not use. Surely she knows the penalty for treason, right? If not, here it is: If convicted, it’s death!

I want to alert High Plains Blogger critics that I have refrained from accusing Trump of treason. Other have done so. That’s their call. Mine is to pull that punch … at least until we have evidence of a treasonous act.

To that end, DNI Gabbard needs to keep her trap shut!

national news

Immigration: way up in polling!

Here’s a news flash that ought to get immigrants’ heart pumping: a Gallup poll says 79% of Americans view immigration and immigrants favorably, compared to 64% a year ago.

Who knew?

I am the direct descendant of immigrants who came to this country in the early 20th century because they, along with millions of others, saw the United States as a place where dreams come true. Theirs did.

And yet, some folks in the Donald Trump administration believe immigrants are sullying the national culture. What the hell?

They aren’t just targeting undocumented immigrants. They want to slam the door in the faces of all foreign nationals who choose to become U.S. citizens. I shake my head in shame and wonderment … and ponder what my Mom’s parents would think of that.

I want to single out briefly my maternal grandmother. She was Yiayia to her 12 grandchildren. Hell, her children — Mom and her two brothers — even referred to her that way. She was as patriotic an American as you would find anywhere. She loved Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. I am prepared to argue that Yiayia was the greatest American I’ve ever known … or ever will know.

She did not sully the character of this nation. She enhanced it! She enriched it! Yiayia and others who choose to live in the world’s most indispensable nation make it even greater than it was before they arrived here.

When I see poll results that tell me that Americans now view immigrants positively, I am heartened by a belief that most of us are rejecting the palaver being offered by Trump and his MAGA cult followers. America’s greatness can be seen every day in the faces of those who chose to seek a better life in the land that offered it to them.

crime news, national news, political news

No apology for being right about this clown

A critic of this blog just cannot seem to grasp the notion that my mind was settled long before Donald and Melania Trump glided down the escalator in the summer of 2015 to begin Donald’s career in politics.

I concede the obvious. Yep. My mind was made up a long time ago. And the 45th and 47th POTUS has done nothing at all to change it. I believe then what I believe now, which is that Trump is categorically unfit for public office.

But you know that already. Correct?

What none of us knows at this moment is what can be done to improve matters in D.C.

I’ll start with a couple of possibilities. One is to turn the House of Reps into an organization led by Democrats. Voters need to wrest control of that chamber from Republicans. If that occurs in the 2026 midterm election, then the fun can begin anew. There might be a third impeachment of this fundamentally corrupt individual. This impeachment could center on his involvement with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein hanged himself in a federal prison cell. Trump is now believed to have had something more than a passing acquaintance with this sexual predator. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump sent Epstein a birthday greeting card years ago. Trump denies it. He has sued the Journal, which stands by its reporting. I’m inclined to stand with the WSJ.

We have seen some fracturing among the MAGA fanatics who have supported Trump since he rode the escalator with Melania. Many of them want Trump to release the documents that could reveal a whole lot about Trump and whether he and Epstein were besties.

The other option is to elect someone to the presidency in 2028 who is clean, scandal-free and who knows how in the hell to govern. It won’t be Trump … no matter what some of his ardent supporters would like to see happen. The Constitution has labeled Trump a lame duck until Jan. 20, 2029.

Then it will be good bye and good riddance to the singularly most stupid individual ever elected to the presidency. Then we’ll have to ensure we cannot make that mistake ever again.

national news, political news

Voters are a confusing bunch

The run-of-the-mill American voter appears to suffer from some form of political schizophrenia.

Think about this for a moment, because that might be all the time you care to ponder what I am about to put forth.

Americans twice elected a young man who blazed trails everywhere he went, as the first Black editor of the Harvard Journalism Review, the first Black president of the United States, who was faithful to his wife and who avoided any semblance of scandal during his two terms in the White House.

Then voters in 2016 and in 2024 elected arguably the dumbest man ever to hold the office, who has acknowledged cheating on all three of his wives, who paid a porn actress to keep quiet about a sexual encounter he said never happened, who has never acknowledged a single failure in his professional life, who denigrates war heroes and Gold Star families, who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War, who selects certifiable morons to serve in the Cabinet, who lies at a breathtaking pace, who provoked an armed attack on the federal government to stop the certification of a free, fair and legal presidential election in 2020, the one that the president has never admitted he lost.

This is the kind of strange behavior that defies description. It challenges anyone to explain how an electorate can transform itself from a body of Americans dedicated to real-life change for the better to one that falls victim to a cretin’s call to follow him backward into the era of Jim Crow.

My hope is a simple one. That we can reverse what we have done to our nation in 2026 and again in 2028. We are far better than what we have delivered to ourselves in the form of a national government.

national news

Donald Trump: RINO in chief

Donald John Trump’s game of charade as he pretends to be a “conservative Republican” has been called out many times by many people and in many forums. So what I am going to provide isn’t an exclusive.

He is a Republican In Name Only. Trump is the nation’s RINO in chief.

There once was a time when Republicans stood for fiscal responsibility. They railed against budget deficits, no matter their size. The 1980 GOP landslide win for the presidency rested in part on Ronald Reagan’s intense criticism of President Carter’s $43 billion budget deficit that fiscal year. Forty-three billion bucks wouldn’t even get a mention these days!

Trump’s big ugly bill runs up deficits in the trillions of dollars. It piles on another $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. About the only GOP-friendly policy in the big ugly bill are the tax cuts that benefit the mega-rich. Those cuts come at a cost … the aforementioned deficits and debt.

Republicans hate Marxist dictators. Trump calls them “smart cookies,” says he admires their leadership strength, wishing he had the kind of popular support that they enjoy.

GOP pols normally would rally to the side of a sovereign nation attacked by Russia. Not this RINO in chief, who scolded the Ukrainian president for daring to suggest he could defeat the Russians on the battlefield.

Donald Trump has turned Republican orthodoxy on its ear. Yet he continues to bully GOP members of both congressional chambers into backing his idiotic tariffs, which real Republicans such as George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford all have said are taxes that result only in inflation.

Donald Trump once admitted that he ran for president as a Republican only because the GOP offered him the easier path to the pinnacle of power. There you have it right there. He cannot articulate a party policy issue because he is too stupid to understand one.

All hail the RINO in chief!

local news, national news, political news

Now we get to test our system

Donald Trump’s big ugly bill is now law, which means that the next big test of the strength of our democracy awaits in the form of congressional elections, which are approaching rapidly.

Can you believe it?

Americans who are concerned about the slashing of social programs, the effect it all will have on our national debt, the tax cuts for the mega-richest of us, the pardoning of criminals who attacked our Capitol on 1/6 will get a chance to elect a new Congress in November 2026.

It’s up to us, kids. You and me. All of us.

Talking about it, attending rallies, spending money to political causes won’t do the job. To finish the task, Americans who say they oppose the big ugly bill need to get out and vote. President Obama was fond of telling us to avoid the boos and jeers. “Vote!” he would say. Just vote your conscience. If your conscience moves you to cast your ballot for someone other than those who support the big ugly bill, you are afforded the right to do so in secret.

No one needs to know. Just vote!

I won’t keep my preferences a secret. I will continue to speak out on this blog about the direction I hope the country takes in a little more than a year from now. We have a congressman in North Texas, a gentleman I happen to like personally, who is on the wrong side of this big ugly bill issue. I intend to let Keith Self know my feelings frequently. I just hope he gets a worthy opponent who can speak intelligently and pledges to act accordingly to fix what I believe is wrong with the direction we’re taking.

No hard feelings, OK congressman?

national news

We’re still an immigrant nation

Americans lit the first birthday candle on their national cake 249 years ago when they declared their independence from the British monarchy.

We went to war to secure that independence and by 1789, the Constitution was completed. It was a flawed document that has needed some amendments along the way to create a “more perfect Union.”

A central tenet has remained. We were a nation created by people who fled other countries, came here in search of opportunity and the “pursuit of happiness.” That mission is underway at this very minute.

Let us never forget that essential truth about the United States of America. We were built by immigrants. Our nation has continued to thrive and prosper largely because of immigrants who came along later.

I am the direct descendant of immigrants. They came here from southern Greece and from Turkey. They did it legally. They had all the documentation required of them. They settled eventually in Portland, Ore. My grandparents all were proud Americans. They chose to live here. They weren’t blessed with being born here. One of my grandfathers, my Papou George, enlisted in the U.S. Army because he wanted to fight for his new country in World War I. They all came here in search of a good life … and they found it.

I understand and accept the current administration’s desire to crack down on illegal immigration. What I cannot accept is the brutish tactics being used to separate families, to deport individuals who have committed no crimes. I cannot accept the description being muttered out loud that immigrants in general have soiled our national identity.

All of this is fundamentlly ani-American. It goes against the very principles our founders used to create what would become the greatest nation on Earth.

Let us never forget — and may we always honor — our national history of welcoming immigrants to our land. Our immigrant heritage clearly is worth celebrating as we honor the birth of the world’s most indispensable nation.

national news

The Age of Political Perversion

Welcome to a new age that I will call the Age of Political Perversion, where perverts hijack the tenets of our democratic republic for their own nefarious aims.

The perverts say they love the flag, but a few hundred of them used Old Glory to assault police offices in the nation’s Capitol on 1/6, inflicting serious bodily harm in the process.

They claim to be evangelical Christians, yet they throw their support behind a man who has admitted to cheating on his wives, admitted to groping women in their private areas and has been found liable for the sexual assault on a woman who accused him of raping her.

They say they cherish family values but now support efforts to separate children from their parents over alleged illegal entry into the United States.

They call themselves “strict constructionists” of the Constitution, but then challenge a free and fair presidential election and seek to overturn its result.

We’re going to celebrate our nation’s birth. It’s been more than two centuries since we tossed aside the ham-fisted rule of the British monarchy. Our nation’s founders established a secular government devoid of any reference to a specific religion. Yet many of our founders’ descendants contend this is a “Christian nation” founded on the principles espoused in the New Testament. The founders were men of faith but they kept their faith to themselves and purposely established that there “shall be no law” establishing a state religion.

I love the flag. I salute Old Glory whenever possible. I am going to fly it in front of my home tomorrow. Let us remember, though, that the flag is a symbol of freedom and liberty. It isn’t a sacred piece of merchandise. Its sacred qualities lie in the liberty it represents.

So, when the president of the USA decides to hug and kiss Old Glory — which the current guy did a few years ago — he only furthers the perversion of the movement that follows his every lying word.

Happy birthday, America. Many of us still love you.

national news

Get ready for some serious pain

I am going to doff my proverbial cap and proclaim that Donald J. Trump did the nearly impossible by persuading enough Republican members of Congress that it was in their best political interest to approve Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that gives tax cuts to rich folks who don’t need them while yanking money away from programs that help millions of other Americans who need the assistance.

I don’t recall Trump ever campaigning for the issues he managed to accomplish with this legislation. He never said he would slash Medicare and Medicaid while giving more tax cuts to the mega-wealthy. He never pledged to gut the USAID funds that help feed starving children abroad. He didn’t say he would all but destroy the social fabric of our government.

That is what Congress has signed on to do. The Senate needed a tie-breaking vote from Vice President J.D. Vance to send the bill to the House. And the House needed to get a first-class bullying job from Trump to send this piece of sh** legislation to Trump’s desk for his signature.

What’s next? I suppose we now have the 2026 congressional election coming up. There must be a formula for turning Congress over to the control of the opposition party that actually cares about the entire country, rather than just those who support what passes for the Republican Party … and the RINO in Chief.

I will offer a left-handed tribute to Trump for defying all the odds and getting his fellow nation-haters to climb aboard the clown car that now governs us.

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have been exposed as a powerless collection of men and women who cannot find their backside with both hands. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries set a House record for speaking for the longest stretch ever. Big deal. Congressional elections are coming up next year. This is the best opportunity voters will have to change the dynamic in Washington and restore some semblance of compassion in a government that today demonstrated that it has nothing to offer.