Category Archives: national news

national news

Trump’s damage will last longer than the POTUS

Donald Trump’s time in the Oval Office has an end date, and I am grateful for that deadline.

However, the damage Trump has done — and is doing — is likely to last longer than his time in office. That consequence saddens me to no end. The damage is being done to the public perception of our electoral process.

He has been hammering at the credibility of that process since he lost his re-election bid during the 2020 election. Joe Biden beat his sorry behind but Trump never accepted the beating he took. His constant yammering about electoral credibility has sown plenty of doubt among too many Americans.

I believe none of the nonsense that Trump has fomented since 2020. Too many state legislatures, though, are controlled by Republicans and they have acted to make voting an arduous task for many citizens. They call it “voter suppression” and it appears to be working.

I hear from friends and aquaintances in North Texas about the doubt they say lingers over the election process. I have heard too many of them say something like “if it counts” when describing the act of voting. My answer always is, “Yes … it counts!”

The lasting damage to the public’s perception of our cherished voting process is troubling in the extreme and it serves as a damning testament to the harm committed to our public service by an imbecile who has no understanding or appreciation of the work done to further our democratic process.

national news

Trump: madman at work

The longer we remain at war with a nation that poses no direct threat to this nation, the more convinced I become that the man who started this war is a certifiable madman.

OK, so that’s not a huge flash to many of you who read this blog regularly. I have stated already my loathing for the POTUS and for most of the policy decisions he makes. What troubles me beyond all that is reasonable in this war with Iran is that the decision came seemingly in the dead of night, with no one next to the POTUS to caution him of the terrible risk he is taking.

What’s more, Donald Trump took this action without seeming to comprehend fully the enormous responsbility he bears when he sends young Americans into harm’s way ostensibly to protect our national interests.

Which interest is Trump protecting with this foolish and feckless act?

Iran’s leadership needed to be wiped out. The initial strike took care of the Ayatollah Ali Khameini. What follows remains anyone’s guess. Will the new ayatollah be any better? Will he assume power with his hand out in a gesture of peace? I can’t continue down this path because I will be laughing too hard derisively at such a notion.

Trump won the 2024 election vowing to end our involvement in “needless war,” only to break that promise and immediately put thousands of young Americans at risk of death or injury.

Yep. Make no mistake that Donald John Trump is out of control. He wants to seize Greenland from Denmark, wants to annex Canada as the 51st state in the U.S.A., wants to run Venezuela as if it’s a casino and now — and this is totally rich — is considering whether to take control of Cuba.

Oh, and let’s not forget reports that the POTUS is giving serious thought to sending ground troops into Iran.

He’s out of what passes for his mind.

national news

Tillis makes his point with DHS boss

Thom Tillis was pissed off — as in royally pissed off — when his time arrived to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem before a U.S. Senate committee.

I watched a bit of Tillis’s performance, and I have to tell you, the North Carolina Republican brought his A-game to the hearing. He believes Noem is incompetent and doesn’t deserve to be in the job she holds. He wants Donald Trump to remove her if she doesn’t quit. If that won’t happen, he wants the House to impeach her.

Tillis is angry over the behavior of Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons who have been arresting children in schools, U.S. citizens and other on suspicion that they might be out to do harm to Americans. What a crock of bull dookey!

Here, though, is another remarkable aspect of Tillis’s remarks to Noem. The DHS secretary took it. She absorbed the blows quietly. She didn’t fire back with filibuster-like responses. There were no insults hurled at Tillis from the witness chair. She didn’t lie to suggest that ICE thugs were acting appropriately.

I only can conclude that unlike the Democratic members of Congress who have challenged Noem’s handling of this immigration matter, Republican members are getting the respect they deserve … and which all members of either party deserve when they question witnesses who take an oath to tell the truth.

Other appearances by Noem and other Cabinet honchos have been exercises in futility as Democrats and witnesses talk — and scream — over each other. The hearing I watched today was educational, given that Kristi Noem knew her place in the moment and reacted accordingly … for once!

national news, national security

Border crisis need not produce this solution

Critics of this blog have long accused its author — that would be me — of being a “yes man” to all policies Democratic and a “hatchet man” to ideas that come from Republicans.

Wrong! As in really wrong!

I was the rare President Biden supporter who said long ago that the president needed to call the situation along our southern border what I believed it was: a crisis. He refused to do so. Instead, the president masked the situation in gauzy terms meant to disguise the reality along our southern flank, which was that people were continuing to seek refuge in the “land of opportunity, freedom and good fortune.”

Donald Trump came along and then sicced the Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons on our cities and border towns. The result of their heavy hand has made us even less safe. I want, therefore, to declare that Trump’s answer to the crisis is the wrong answer.

If the current POTUS had an ounce of compassion coursing through his overfed body he would have told the ICE agents to use extreme discernment in rooting out the bad guys. He didn’t. The ICE goons have picked up on the message from the top, which is that it’s OK to roust everyone, to beat many of them to within an inch of their lives, to separate children from their parents.

I like quoting one of my favorite philosophers, who happens to be fictional character on a once-popular TV show. You remember Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick who used to tell the world that “Two wrongs don’t make it right.”

Tonto is correct. It was wrong for President Biden to avoid declaring the southern border mess a “crisis.” It is wrong for Donald Trump to hire heavily armed and masked thugs to beat the living daylights out of U.S. citizens while searching for criminals.

It no longer matters what we call the border mess. We can fix the second problem and force ICE to rethink the way it enforces the law.

Donald Trump, national news

Stage set for midterm wipeout

Donald J. Trump could have followed the path forged by every one of the men who preceded him in the office he occupies.

He could have reached out to Democrats and said, “I pledge to work with you to cure what ails us.” Well … he didn’t do that when he stood in front of a partially filled House of Reps chamber to deliver the State of the Union speech that has been widely panned.

Instead, he called Democrats names for their refusal to attend the speech. He accused them of inflating the cost of food, of following an “open border” policy pushed by former President Biden, of putting Americans in danger.

The SOTU didn’t go well for Trump. Polling data suggests that Americans saw straight through what he was doing, which was he talked to his MAGA base, seeking to rally the shrinking core of fervent Trumpkins to get out and vote.

I watched about half of Trump’s speech. I didn’t see the staredown he had with U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona or when he introduced all the celebrities who attended the speech. I understand Democrats joined their GOP colleagues in applauding the U.S. men’s hockey team fresh from winning Olympic gold in Milan, Italy; the bipartisan ovation was a nice touch to be sure.

Trump, though, has set the table for a GOP rout when the midterm election comes around in November. I have no clue how many congressional seats the Democrats will gain. I am going to hope for all my worth that the Constitution will stand strong against Trump’s all but admitted attempt to rig the election.

I believe we are now witnessing the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the democracy the rest of us cherish.

Donald Trump, national news

Our Union is broken

Donald Trump is going to lie about the State of the Union in a little while, so I thought I would get ahead of him and tell what I believe to be the truth about our national condition.

The State of our Union needs triage. It needs attention to repair the damage that Trump and his goons have delivered to the nation we all love. I cannot wait for what I know will be a cascade of untrue assertions. He will declare the economy is the strongest in human history, that our military is locked and loaded and ready to go to war, that Americans love him and his policies, that the border is secure and his get-tough immigration policies are working.

The Union is strong, he will tell us. It isn’t. Not at this moment in history.

I will declare that the Union can be repaired. It can be stitched together into the kind of government our founders wanted when they created the Constitution in 1789.

The rebuilding will take patience and time, as we will learn in real time that a structure can be dismantled far more quickly than it can be rebuilt. I am going to stand by my faith in the court system the founders created.

Trump has surrounded himself with a cadre of yes men and women. We have watched them lie just like the guy to whom they are faithful. Polling data suggest that Americans across the board — Republican, Democrat and independent — have had their fill of the lying. Therein might be our way out of this slop. The midterm election in November can deliver us from the evil of Trump, who has no working majority in Congress.

I will offer a word of advice to those who choose to listen to Trump deliver his SOTU speech: Don’t believe a single statement that flies out of his mouth.

national news, political news

Trump teaches master class on projection

Listening to Donald Trump rant and rail against RINOs provides us with a master class on projection in which someone with certain despicable traits seeks to project them onto others.

Trump is the master instructor on projection.

He calls those who oppose him Republicans in name only, RINOs. Trump is the RINO in chief, as he has tossed aside damn near every conceivable Republican tenet to achieve his standing on the American political landscape. Low taxes, smaller government, working for the “little guy,” ending wars? They’re all lies.

As for his labeling media outlets the purveyors of “fake news,” let us remember that the liar in chief got his political chops by seeking to convey the lie that Barack Obama was ineligible to run for president because he was born in another country. Yet he calls reporters “terrible,” and “despicable” because they ask him questions he cannot answer.

Projection, man. It’s all projection.

national news, political news

Independent voter? Less so now!

My list of acquaintances in North Texas is a lengthy one, as I have become acquainted with lots of folks as I move from place to place in my daily routine.

When they learn of what I did when I was a working man — as a journalist who spent 37 joyful practicing my craft — the question often comes: Oh, say, how do you lean politically? Are you a Democrat or a Republican?

For starters, my politics had nothing to do with my job as a journalist. I generally was able to check my partisan label at the door. It’s different these days. Yes, I still cover local communities in Collin County, but the issues never tread onto partisan ground. However, I keep my head in the big game of national politics.

Now comes an admission. For longer than I dare seek to remember, I have declined to hang a party label on my politics. I long considered myself to be an independent voter. I have split my ballot generously between Democrats and Republicans. My presidential votes, though, have been Democratic since 1972, when I cast my first vote president.

Today’s national mood, I am sad to acknowledge, is driving me more solidly into the Democratic camp. I haven’t changed my basic world view. I remain a deficit hawk and I am not going to embrace some of the far-left progressive policies — such as Medicare for all and forgiving all student loans — that have become all the rage. However, I do believe government has a significant role to play in supporting Americans who need help.

When I hear the MAGA morons extol the virtues of the MAGA chieftain disguised as the POTUS, I am reminded each day how little I think of them and the nitwit they follow. I want secure borders as much as the next American, but I also want my government to treat everyone who comes here — legally or otherwise — with a degree of compassion and humanity.

Therefore, it is becoming safer to say that anyone who cares to ask me whether I “belong” to a politial party, I can still say “no,” given that Texas doesn’t require us to register with any partisan organization … but I can say the Democrats appeal to more than ever.

And it has much to do with the blind, gullible and feckless fealty that too damn many Republicans keep expressing for Donald J. Trump.

national news

Interesting times? Ya think?

Can it be that we all are living in an era that is producing a political climate none of us ever saw coming? I believe that is the case.

Ponder for just a moment a short series of events:

We elected an an individual to the presidency with zero public service experience and whose notoriety was forged on a reality TV show in which he fired make-believe businesspeople.

This individual has insulted a Vietnam War hero, a Gold Star family, a reporter with a physical challenge, and all the men and women who have chosen to wear the uniform of the nation’s military.

He lost an election, declared it — without an ounce of proof — to be a fraud, then instigated an insurrection against the very government he once swore to protect and defend.

He ran a third time for the White House vowing to be the “retribution” of those who cling to his cockeyed views. And he has delivered mightily on that promise.

Donald Trump then vowed to purge the nation of undocumented immigrants and deployed a poorly trained, heavily armed, masked-up army of agents who have killed American citizens on the street, arrested thousands of others wrongly.

What has all of this produced? Chaos, misery, grief, anxiety, heartbreak … and any other sort of emotion one can define.

I am disgusted beyond all measure by what is transpiring in real time in this nation I love with all my heart.

The Chinese proverb about “living in interesting times” doesn’t come within a country mile of defining what we’re enduring these days. It’s frightening, but I’ll say it once more that we have plenty of constitutional weapons we can deploy to fight this hideous trend.

national news

The saga continues …

There is not a single thing about the Donald Trump story I find to be “heroic,” but it surely has been a lengthy tale of tumult, a bit of woe and certainly drama.

I, along with many millions of American patriots, am anxious for the end to arrive. No one can predict how this matter will conclude. We’ll have an election in November, the result of which could turn Trump into a real-life lame duck who can wait it out until the end of his term in the White House.

Or the election, if it goes according to what the experts are predicting, will produce a ton of tempest … if Democrats win back control of the U.S. House and possibly even the U.S. Senate.

What happens then? I am quite certain an impeachment lies directly in Trump’s future. It’ll be the third such effort to remove Trump from the office he has pretended to serve for five of the past nine years.

Trump’s time in the White House has been all that many of us feared it would be and what Trump actually predicted would occur. He told us he would be the “retribution” his MAGA supporters sought. By golly, he’s delivered the goods, man.

I listen occasionally to the back-and-forth between congressional Democrats and Trump administration officials testifying before committees and I am left to wonder: How in the name of collegiality can the two sides bridge the chasm that divides them? I know the answer. They cannot.

We’ll have to weather more of what we have seen for as long as Donald Trump remains in office.

The question that will linger is this: Will the POTUS be standing for the remainder of his term?