Category Archives: national news

national news

MAGA cabal calls the shots

Kevin McCarthy made it official: He has instructed the relevant U.S. House of Representatives committee chairs to rev up an inquiry into whether to impeach President Biden.

Which begs this question: Is there a clearer demonstration than this of just who is calling the shots within the People’s House? It ain’t the speaker of the body, but rather it’s the MAGA moron cabal that forced him to act in this irresponsible manner.

Speaker McCarthy is in charge by the slimmest of margins in the House. He owes the speakership to the concessions he made to the MAGA cabal that wants this impeachment inquiry.

What are the charges? What high crime and misdemeanor has the president allegedly committed? Where will this inquiry go and how long will it last?

The MAGA morons want it to go through the next election cycle, keeping the heat on the president for as long as humanly possible.

We are about to witness a staggering abuse of power within the House of Representatives that could rival any such abuses we already have witnessed.

And why? For what reason? I believe I know.

It’s revenge for the twin impeachments leveled against Donald Trump … and it is disgraceful.

national news

No impeachment … OK?

Joe Biden doesn’t deserve to be impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives. If you don’t believe me, then you ought to heed the warnings of some prominent congressional conservatives.

The president is being targeted by the MAGA caucus of the House for unspecified “high crimes and misdemeanors.” What they are must be anyone’s guess.

But, by golly, the MAGA morons are proceeding with an impeachment inquiry, come hell or high water. One of them happens to be my North Texas congressman, freshman Keith Self of McKinney. Good grief, dude. Get a fu**ing grip!

Many conservatives, though, say that impeachment is a non-starter. They include Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Mike Lee of Utah, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

We all know what is driving this idiotic endeavor. It’s revenge against House Democrats who spearheaded two impeachments against a Republican who served as POTUS. That’s it!

Do we have a crime? Is there anything President Biden has done to deserve impeachment? Not … a … damn … thing!

national news

Time doesn’t heal this pain

They say that “time heals” damn near all emotional pain. I’m not sure about that.

We are commemorating the 9/11 attack on our nation today. Twenty-two years ago, Islamic terrorists hijacked jetliners and flew them into the World Trade Center’s towers, into the Pentagon and then — after fighting with the passengers aboard a fourth jetliner — crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pa.

All the times I have watched the horrendous video of that day, witnessing all the carnage, the panic and chaos and I still well up when I gaze on what happened that day.

Indeed, it seems to worsen with time, not the reverse.

The event has spurred me to thank firefighters and police officers when I see them going about their usual day. I have done the same to ambulance drivers, EMTs and paramedics. They all represent a segment of our society that rushed toward the danger when it exploded in front of us on 9/11.

We’ll never forget that horrendous day … and may it always bring back the pain we felt in the moment.

national news

Polling data = real-time snapshot

All the polling data we are seeing these days showing a neck-and-neck race between President Joe Biden and the man he defeated in 2020 remind me of historical precedent.

Which is to say that today’s polling data don’t mean squat this far out from an upcoming election.

Yes, I have commented on my frustration that Donald Trump even can collect 35 to 40% of the electorate’s favor, given all he has said, done and demonstrated since he became a politician in 2015.

But I want to revisit some recent presidential polling history to remind you of how volatile these polls can become.

Remember that public opinion polls are merely a real-time snapshot of what is on people’s minds. Opinions change.

Prior to the 1984 election, Walter Mondale was seen as a legitimate challenger to President Reagan. The president was re-elected with an 18% margin and a 49-state Electoral College wipeout. In 1992, Ross Perot actually led President George H.W. Bush and former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Perot finished with 19% of the vote and zero Electoral College votes, while Bill Clinton breezed to election.

Four years later, Sen. Bob Dole was neck-and-neck with the president, but then lost decisively. In 2008, Sen. John McCain was seen as a possible winner against Sen. Barack Obama; it didn’t happen. Obama was in danger four years later of losing to Mitt Romney; he won comfortably.

Today’s polling data mean next to nothing. Trump is going on trial on at least two of the indictments leveled against him prior to the GOP primary season. Americans are going to get a snootful from courtrooms about the way he conducted himself during his time in office and, most damaging, after he lost the 2020 election.

I am going to stand squarely on my view that Donald Trump is not electable in 2024. Period. He has no vision for the future, other than telling us how he intends to exact revenge on his foes. His unfitness for public office cannot be stated any more starkly than that.

The polling data will be there to remind us … in real time.

crime news, legal news, national news

FBI says ‘no insurrection’? Hmm …

I have been schooled by a critic of this blog who tells me the FBI can find no evidence of an “organized plot” to overturn the 2020 presidential election result.

This, for instance, comes from the Daily Beast: Over 570 alleged rioters have been arrested since the storming of the U.S. Capitol in January—but the FBI has reportedly found little evidence that the riot was an organized plot to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat.

All righty. I will accept that. I must have been looking the other way when the FBI made that determination. I never have declared myself to be all-knowing all the time.

But … what does any of that do to the case leveled against Donald Trump? In my mind? Not much.

The grand jury that examined the 1/6 assault on our government did not cite “insurrection” as a specific charge against Trump. It speaks to obstruction of justice and other assorted crimes allegedly attributable to the ex-POTUS.

I am going to stand with the findings — as I have understood them — of special counsel Jack Smith’s team that Trump impeded efforts to quell the violence that day.

Again, from the Daily Beast: Reuters reports that the FBI has so far found scant evidence to suggest that the riot was centrally coordinated by far-right groups, the former president himself, or his close allies. 

OK, then. However, no one can deny the attack occurred. Nor can anyone deny that Trump delivered a speech that morning on the Ellipse that stirred a lot of individuals up. Many of them were video- and audio-recorded saying they were acting at Trump’s behest, which he delivered to them on the Ellipse. Is that a “centrally coordinated” event? Not in the strict sense of the terminology.

However, he could have stopped it. He could have issued a statement urging the mob to go home. He could have taken to Twitter to issue that call. He didn’t do anything of the sort. He watched it unfold from the White House.

And did nothing!

Am I a bit wiser now about the FBI’s view of what happened? Sure I am. I also remain convinced that Donald Trump needs to be held accountable for his role in what transpired on that horrible day.

national news

Foundations take a stand for democracy

This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day, but it has and the fate of democracy in the United States well might benefit greatly from this statement.

Six presidential foundations have issued a statement calling for a revitalization of democratic principles ahead of the 2024 presidential campaign. The statement came initially from the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas; cosigners are the LBJ Foundation in Austin, the Obama Foundation in Chicago, the George and Barbara Bush Foundation in College Station and the John F. Kennedy Center and Library in Boston.

The statement didn’t name names, but it didn’t need to. We all know who is the object of the statement’s warning … it would Donald J. Trump and his fixation with autocracy.

“As a diverse nation of people with different backgrounds and beliefs, democracy holds us together,” the groups said. “We are a country rooted in the rule of law, where the protection of the rights of all people is paramount. At the same time, we live among our fellow citizens, underscoring the importance of compassion, tolerance, pluralism, and respect for others.”

Presidential foundations call for return to democratic values ahead of 2024 elections (ketr.org)

Indeed, our nation’s founders launched a revolution against a government that sought to subjugate colonial residents to the iron fist of autocratic rule. What emerged from that conflict in the 18th century was a nation founded on the notion that peaceful dissent is part of our governing fabric.

Let us never lose sight of what our founders intended.

national news

Who is this new carnival barker?

Who in the world is Vivek Ramaswamy, who I believe is trying to emerge as the Republican Party’s new snake-oil vendor of choice?

Dude is 38 years of age. He’s never held a public office. I don’t yet know how he acquired his wealth … I’ll have to look it up. He talks some wild game about opposing further aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and then says Donald Trump’s actions on 1/6 were “abhorrent” but he remains in Trump’s camp if the twice-impeached, four-times indicted former POTUS gets nominated by the GOP next summer.

Ramaswamy is weird, man.

This political newbie might be making some waves among Republican base voters, aka the MAGA morons on the far-right wing of a once-great political party.

What part of Ramaswamy’s background concerns me the most? It might be his lack of political exposure or experience. We saw what happened the last time Americans elected such an individual. He shot off his mouth and got impeached for seeking a political favor from a foreign head of state; he got impeached again for inciting the mob to storm the Capitol Building to stop the counting of Electoral College votes after the 2020 presidential election.

Do we want to hand another political neophyte the nuclear launch codes?

Hmmm … hell no!

military news, national news

Sen. Tuberville: No. 1 dumbass

Congress has been populated over its more than two centuries of existence by many dumbasses and … yes, I will stipulate that they come from both sides of the partisan aisle.

However, the No. 1 dumbass in the Senate happens to be a Republican, a former major college football coach and an idiot who is spitting in the faces of the men and women who deserve nothing but respect from the people who serve in our government.

Sen. Dumbass is Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, whose one-man blockage campaign has held up the promotions of dozens of senior officers and denied the Marine Corps of being led by a commandant for the first time in the Corps’ history.

Why is that? Because Sen. Dumbass says the military allows women who serve to obtain abortions, in addition to any of the other reproductive health care issues that need attention.

Dumbass’s campaign has put the nation’s military preparedness in jeopardy. He is denying the military its full complement of general-grade officers because this foolish effort to deny those who serve the opportunity to obtain legally provided health care.

What the hell is happening to us? Imagine for just a moment what the Republican outcry would be if a Democrat was employing a one-senator rule to block appointments in the military because of a policy disagreement. Senate rules empower one senator with the authority to act as Sen. Dumbass has done.

The very idea that a Republican senator is laying waste to the military high command is enough to send many of us into a frenzy.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is set to retire next month. Will Sen. Dumbass block Gen. Milley’s successor from ascending to the Joint Chiefs chair? What in the world must this be doing to morale among the soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and Coast Guardsman and women we ask to defend us?

Sen. Dumbass needs to stand down and let our armed forces do their jobs.

national news

Why punish ’em because of one man?

Never will I understand the “rationale” that has gripped the modern Republican Party, which is turning its ire on politicians who have the temerity to oppose a single individual … with zero regard to their established records.

You know to whom I refer. Donald Trump has established a cult following among so-called “core” Republicans. That core takes its vengeance out on politicians and political candidates who bitch out loud about the immorality and unfitness for public office that Trump exhibits multiple times daily.

Such political petulance has cost the GOP core several key figures in the ranks of politicians who formerly carried the party’s message forward.

Liz Cheney is one of the victims. She had the nerve to declare Trump to be an existential threat to our national political fabric. Her punishment was to be voted out in the 2022 GOP primary in Wyoming, which she represented in the U.S. House of Representatives.

She is as conservative as they come. Her record opposing abortion, gun control legislation, excessive taxes and so many other hot-button issues is intact. It’s not good enough for the MAGA morons who dominate the political landscape in her state.

Same for Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah. He voted to convict Trump in both of his Senate impeachment trials. Now comes word that the MAGA minions will “primary” him when his term comes up. What the hell? He was the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee and remains a staunch, avid and vocal conservative. He also believes Trump is a chump, a phony and a fraud.

Those are just two prime examples of the disease that has infected a once-great political party. The GOP has become one man’s play thing to the detriment of those who believe in actual conservative values, not to mention to the rest of us who worry about the future of our democratic republic.

It’s all so sad and sickening.

environmental news, Joe Biden, national news

Politics turns ugly in times of need

Don’t you just hate the gamesmanship that develops among politicians when disaster strikes communities, and even entire states? I do. It drives me batty.

For example …

President Biden traveled to Florida to examine he wreckage brought by Hurricane Idalia. Biden is running for re-election. One of the candidates wishing to succeed him is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of a thundering herd of Republicans seeking his party’s nomination.

Biden says the federal government “will take care of Florida.” He added that “I don’t know” what the governor’s plans are during his brief visit to the “hurricane state.”

This kind of crap seemingly occurs all the time. Politicians seeking high public office just don’t dare be seen on camera cozying up to other politicians against whom they might be running.

Do you recall the time in 2012 when Superstorm Sandy devastated New Jersey? Democratic President Barack Obama went to the Jersey Shore to see the damage. Republican Gov. Chris Christie greeted him and was photographed — get ready for it — with his arm around the president’s shoulder. 

The response from Republicans was astonishing, to say the least. How in the world could a GOP governor be so damn friendly to a Democratic president who was just doing his job as the nation’s consoler in chief? 

How about the time Republican President Bush embraced then-Democratic U.S. Senate leader Tom Daschle after delivering his speech to Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Or when he sought to console New York’s Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer by cupping Schumer’s face in his hands on the floor of Congress?

It’s common knowledge, of course, that we have only president at a time and that individual is on call 24/7 to respond to emergencies when they occur. One of the occurred this past week in Florida and Joe Biden is answering that call. Why does it matter one damn bit whether the governor of that state is running for the office that Joe Biden now occupies?

It shouldn’t matter!