Category Archives: national news

national news

GOP on wrong side in abortion fight

Abortion is a political issue that gives me the heebie-jeebies, given the intensity of views on both sides of the great divide.

I consider myself to be pro-choice, but clearly I am not pro-abortion. And, no, those terms are not mutually exclusive. I merely cannot counsel a woman to obtain an abortion; then again, I do not deserve to have any say on how a woman should make such a gut-wrenching decision.

Republican politicians, therefore, are on the wrong side of history when they continue to dictate to women what they can and cannot do to manage their own biological affairs. Voters across the nation are making their feelings clear as well on that issue, turning back GOP-led efforts to ban abortion, to make it illegal.

Ohio voters spoke loudly and clearly on the matter by ratifying a measure to make abortion rights part of that state’s constitution. Other states’ voters in places such as Kansas, Mississippi, Kentucky and Virginia have offered the same message to GOP pols: Do not dictate to us how we can make these decisions.

The Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade earlier this year, energizing abortion-rights advocates across the land. Let us not be coy about this fact, either: abortion is going to play a major role in every election going forward as we march toward the 2024 presidential election.

Voters already are speaking with absolute clarity on this issue. They have warned the pols in D.C. to keep their mitts of women’s reproductive rights. The key question now is this: Will the hide-bound politicians listen to what their constituents — their bosses — are telling them?

national news

Wait for the trials … and convictions!

Norm Ornstein is one of those Washington, D.C., gray eminences whom the media turn to for a look at the political landscape and whether it is changing under our feet in real time.

Ornstein believes that Donald Trump’s current standing as the “frontrunner” for the 2024 presidential election is going to change “when and if the convictions” start rolling in from the felony criminal trials that await the former POTUS.

I believe he is correct. At least I hope he is correct. You see, the polling data showing Trump ahead of President Biden in several key battleground states simply baffles me beyond all measure.

Ornstein suggests that Biden could be in serious trouble if he is unable to persuade Americans that the successes he has enjoyed are the real deal. I believe they are, but he continues to underperform among voters who continue to tell pollsters that the country is headed in the “wrong direction.”

Huh? I don’t get it! Unemployment remains below 4%. Jobs keep piling up. Inflation, while still troublesome, is beginning to level off. The Fed appears set to put the brakes on interest rate increases.

Yes, we have war in the Middle East. And in Ukraine. Biden has held our alliances together.

The border crisis? It still is a serious problem, but it’s good to remember that we’re still detaining and deporting thousands of undocumented immigrants weekly.

“One of the things that I think is clear here is that most voters have paid no or little attention to Donald Trump’s legal problems,” Ornstein told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi. “That will change when we get criminal trials. And especially if and when we get convictions.”

It’s good to ask ourselves: Are Americans really and truly so stupid, gullible and ignorant that we want to elect a convicted felon as POTUS?

If we are, then this nation of ours is headed straight into the crapper.

We are much better than that.

national news

GOP gnashes its own throat

What in the world is happening to what passes for a once-great political party? Republicans cannot seem to rally around political leaders of any stripe, or so it seems.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a MAGA darling of the first order, is taking heat from those on the MAGA right wing of the party. Why? Beats the dickens out of me, man!

Former Fox propaganda network blowhard Tucker Carlson has gone after Johnson. According to Newsweek.com: On Thursday night, the House passed a proposal by Johnson that pairs $14.3 billion in emergency funding for Israel with $14.3 billion in cuts to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The measure passed 226-196, largely along party lines, with most Republicans supporting the bill and most Democrats objecting.

Carlson is trying to shake something out of Johnson that suggests the speaker is “prioritizing” foreign aid to Israel … whatever the hell it all means.

My point in all of this is that Speaker Mike Johnson says he wants to be speaker for “all Americans,” but he cannot seem to rein in the disparate elements within his own party.

As for the IRS cuts, let’s remember that the more you gut from the budget of the tax-revenue-supported agency, the fewer dollars the government is going to receive to pay for the myriad government programs that Americans say they want and support.

The MAGA cult is learning in real time how difficult it is to operate a government as complex as the machinery that makes the government of the world’s greatest nation.

Then again, the MAGA cultists who call the shots in the House are more interested in making noise than in crafting laws.

Donald Trump, national news

Polls are testing my faith

All those national public opinion polls showing Donald J. Trump with surprising strength in the Republican primary are testing my stated belief on the outcome of his quest to become POTUS once again.

They tell us he is the favorite to be nominated by the GOP next summer … and that he well could defeat President Biden in the November2024 election.

I have said from the beginning I had serious doubts about either his nomination or his election.

You know what? I am going to stand by my earlier suggestion.

Trump is going to be a convicted felon before the primary season begins. He will stand trial on any number of allegations. He faces a civil verdict soon in the case of his defrauding the government over the value of his estate and property. He could be convicted of pilfering classified documents from the White House. He could be convicted also in Georgia court for seeking to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. He could face conviction over whether he incited the assault on our government on 1/6.

Is this country really going to elect a multiple-times convicted felon, allow him back into the White House, give him the launch codes to our nuclear arsenal, allow him to embark on a vengeance campaign against his political foes or back out of defending Ukraine against the immoral and illegal invasion by Vladimir Putin’s forces?

If it comes true and we elect this traitor to the nation’s highest office, then we are in the deepest trouble imaginable as a nation.

Many of us might be stupid, but I refuse to believe that most Americans are that stupid.

national news

GOP pols wising up?

Can it be that the Republican congressional caucus is wising up to the “Big Lie” and the party’s refusal to acknowledge the truth?

Two key GOP House members today announced their intention to step down when their current terms expire at the end of 2024: Ken Buck of Colorado and Kay Granger from over yonder in Fort Worth.

Buck’s announcement contained a criticism of GOP officeholders who continue to adhere to the Big Lie, that the 2020 election was stolen and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. He said the GOP’s refusal to concede that President Biden is the real deal has inhibited its ability to advance its legislative agenda.

He’s had enough, Buck said.

Granger said it is time for new leaders to emerge. She is 80 years old and has been a force among GOP House members.

The party needs to be revived, to return to its former self as a serious political organization, not a cult wedded to the dictatorial fantasies of a lying, cheating, philandering business mogul.

Buck and Granger might not signal that the tide is turning against the cult leader. Then again … they might perhaps will trigger more statements of indignation against those who foment the Big Lie.

national news

Pence drops out … wow!

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to end his 2024 presidential campaign speaks loudly about the state of affairs within what passes for today’s Republican Party.

Think for a moment about this. Of all the members of the previous administration, damn few of them have stood out as believing that their oaths of office were to the Constitution, not to the individual who led the government for four years from 2017 until 2021.

Pence was one of those who stood for the rule of law when Donald Trump and others sought to coerce him into overturning the results of the 2020 election. Pence said he had no authority to do anything other than what he did, which was to certify the election results and declare that Joe Biden had been elected president of the United States.

It is true, in my view, that Pence did little else of note during his term as VP.  But his refusal to disobey the law and the Constitution stands out.

And it cost him among Republican presidential primary voters, as they appear wedded to the propaganda peddled by the former POTUS.

national news

Hope dashed with speaker pick

My hope all along during the House speaker kerfuffle was that the competing wings within the Republican Party could find a compromise candidate, someone who would pledge to work with all the members of the House.

That’s not what they got in Speaker Mike Johnson. Oh, no. They got a MAGA acolyte who wants to ban abortion nationwide, who continues to challenge the legitimacy of President Biden’s election in 2020, who questions whether we should continue to fund Ukraine’s battle for independence against the Russian aggressors and who seemingly sides with those who want to shut down the government.

The MAGA clowns turned on the lights in the back of the House chamber and found the congressional newbie who fits their description of the near-perfect House speaker.

What a shame. And a sham!

I heard MAGA Mike declare upon taking the oath that he would be the speaker for the entire legislative chamber. Doesn’t that imply he would be willing work with Democrats along with Republicans? It does to me.

Then again, how does that square with the MAGA goons’ stated mission to avoid working with Democrats? That’s what got former Speaker Kevin McCarthy into trouble, right? He locked arms with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown and then — presto! — we had the motion to vacate the speaker’s chair. It came from a single MAGA congressman, Matt Gaetz of Florida.

Ladies and gents, what we have now is a speaker who will serve only a small minority of the majority party in the House. To hell with public opinion of the rest of the country that opposes a national abortion, opposes shutting down the government, wants to continue supporting Ukraine and believes Joe Biden was elected fairly, squarely and legally as president in 2020.

God help us!

national news

MAGA Mike becomes speaker

What do we call the new speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives? I think I’ll settle on MAGA Mike.

I should be happy that the People’s House now has a leader. I am not happy. Speaker Mike Johnson moved from the darkest of shadows into the spotlight quite literally overnight.

Today, with the entire GOP House caucus backing him, MAGA Mike emerged from the way-back bench to become the person who is third in line to become president of the United States of America.

What’s more, we have handed the gavel — and all the power it symbolizes — to an individual who continues to challenge the fact that Joe Biden was elected president of the United States in 2020 and that Donald Trump lost.

Yep, this is the nation’s first MAGA speaker of the House. He emerged after yet another embarrassing sequence of failed votes, of party nominees accepting the GOP call only to quit. The MAGA cult continued to make demands on the individuals it would support.

Then came Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana. He was elected to the House in 2016. He’s been re-elected three times. He doesn’t serve as a front-line leader on any committee. He’s just … there! Johnson shows up, given credence to Woody Allen’s credo that “95% of success starts when you just show up.”

Don’t look for Speaker Johnson to get rid of the rule that forced Kevin McCarthy out of the speakership, the one that empowers just a single House member to call for a vote to kick the speaker out of office. It was a MAGA demand that enabled McCarthy to be elected speaker in the first place — and it did him in.

So now we have MAGA Mike calling the shots in the House.

Is this a time to cheer? Hardly.

I’m going to pray for our country.

national news

Clown show loses another one

The congressional Republican clown show keeps losing its yuksters, apparently because they have had enough of the laughs their show keeps producing.

Get a load of this: Rep. Tom Emmer came out of a closed-door Republican voting session as the party’s latest nominee to become speaker of the U.S. House … only to tell his fellow Republicans — three hours later! — that he doesn’t want the job after all.

What the hell? Oh, but wait. House Republicans nominated Emmer anyway reluctantly after five votes among members of the GOP caucus.

It’s been three weeks since the MAGA cult booted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy out of his office. Republicans then turned to Rep. Steve Scalise, who then dropped out. Up stepped bomb-thrower Rep. Jim Jordan to seek the speakership; three failed House floor votes ended his bid to become the Man of the House.

Then we saw Rep. Emmer rise … only to take a header.

This is a case of a once-great political party being unable to find its backside with both hands.

Once more with gusto: the Republican Party has been seized by the crazed cult that marches to the cadence called by the immediate past POTUS, the clown who says the 2020 election was rigged.

These bozos cannot govern! They intimidate themselves and seek to bully others. They cannot even nominate one of their fellow Republicans to lead a legislative chamber — in which they hold the slimmest majority.

I have to mention that a boatload of important work needs to get done. Let’s see: How about that government shutdown thing? We’ve only got a few days before the government runs out of money. Will the House of Representatives GOP clown show gather itself in time to find someone — anyone! — who wants to take what looks like the worst job in America?

Doubt is creeping in.

national news

How do we repair Congress?

The People’s House is in serious disarray, starting with the top of its leadership chain of command … namely because no one is on duty to bark out orders and demand members to do the right thing.

Thanks to intransigence by the MAGA cabal, the House has now gone almost three weeks without a speaker. He or she is responsible for setting the legislative agenda and for keeping the troops in line to enact legislation.

The MAGA gang forced former Speaker Kevin McCarthy to accept too many restrictions. He paid the price by performing the unconscionable act of working with Democrats to forge a deal to prevent a government shutdown.

No can do, Mr. Speaker, said the MAGA goons. One of them filed a motion to remove McCarthy and it worked. He’s out. It’s been a certifiable clusterf*** ever since!

The House of Reps is broken. It has been shattered because the MAGA cult is not interested in governing. It is interested in obstructing, in making headlines, of proving political points.

How do we repair Congress? Here’s an idea: Vote every single one of the MAGA cultists out of office in 2024 and replace them with politicians who know how government is supposed to work and are willing to operate its complicated machinery.