Category Archives: political news

local news, national news, political news

Democrats seek ‘all-blue vote’

National Democratic Party officials are asking those of us who fear the possibility of a Republican return to power in the White House to do something I find objectionable.

They want us to “vote all blue” throughout the ballots we are going to get on Nov. 5.

I am afraid I cannot do that. Voting straight-Democratic Party line at election time runs counter to my firmly held belief that voters need to examine every race individually and determine who is the better candidate for every position being contested.

I am planning to endorse the Democratic nominees for POTUS and for U.S. Senate in Texas. That’s no surprise to those who read this blog. What might surprise some of you is that I likely will cast my vote for Republican candidates farther down the ballot. Moreover, I am keeping an open mind on the race for the 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House.

I happen to be acquainted with several candidates running for public office in Collin County, where I reside. They belong to both major parties. Am I going to punch the straight-party spot on the ballot without even considering the candidates who represent the other party? I cannot do that in good conscience.

Good government requires voters to exercise their due diligence. I consider myself to be a good-government progressive, which requires me — according to my own definition — to ensure I know the candidates’ stands on issues pertinent to the office they seek.

We have many good men and women running for public office in this county; many of them happen to be Republicans.

Do I want the Democrats to retain the White House? Yes! Do I want the Dems to strengthen their grip on the U.S. Senate? Again, yes. Do I want them to take control of the U.S. House? Ditto on that, too.

There are compelling issues at stake at the presidential and congressional levels. That is as far as it goes. Voting “all blue” means casting aside worthy candidates for the Texas Legislature and for countywide offices that in reality shouldn’t even be considered on partisan ballots.

I’m in on the “all blue” initiative … to a point.

national news, political news

Head-spinning begins

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My 74-year-old noggin is spinning like Linda Blair’s in the “The Exorcist.” At times it feels as if it’s going 360 degrees.

That is what this presidential election season is doing to me.

Republicans are set to nominate an individual they have selected twice already to run for president. He won the first time in one of the most bizarre flukes in American political history, capturing the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by 3 million ballots. He lost the second time fair and square, only to declare the election was rigged and was stolen from him.

Now the GOP is going to nominate him one more time? His platform sounds like the 2020 theme, which is that it is short on ideas for the future and long on made-up grievances.

Except that he has persuaded enough Americans that his dubious gripes are real enough for them to climb aboard his clown car.

Democrats have a successful incumbent running as an underdog, for God’s sake! President Biden’s term so far has produced far more successes than failures, and yet the MAGA minions seek to persuade us that the Joe Biden presidency has been an abject failure.

What the hell … ?

Republicans are hell bent on suppressing voter turnout. Democrats want the turnout to break the records set in 2020. By my own barometer, I long have believed that democracy works best when more — rather than fewer — voters take part.

I won’t even get into the felony trials involving the GOP nominee’s criminal allegations. He is wanting to delay them past the election and then is hoping for all he can to be elected so he can just crumple them up and toss ’em into the crapper.

I do not intend to allow that to happen, if this blog has any pull at all.

First things first, though. I have to get my head to stop spinning.

crime news, national news, political news

Pence ignores the obvious

Mike Pence says he won’t endorse the man in whose administration he served as vice president.

Oh, and why is that? Well, the former VP says he and the ex-POTUS have fundamental policy differences. Therefore, he won’t endorse the guy who also incited a mob to seek out the VP while carrying signs that said “Hang Mike Pence!”

Or that he said Pence was a coward for refusing to discount votes that elected Joe Biden president of the U.S. in 2020.

Or that he did nothing to call off the traitors who stormed the Capitol on the Sixth of January.

No, Pence said he cannot endorse the former Moron in Chief because of “policy differences.”

What … a … coward!

Joe Biden, national news, political news

Let the campaign commence

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The strangest presidential campaign in my memory has begun in earnest … and the two major-party candidates haven’t even been nominated yet by their respective parties.

President Biden is running for re-election against the nimrod he defeated in 2020. For reasons that I cannot explain or understand, he is running — for the time being — as the underdog in this contest.

I don’t get it. The economy is rocking along. Americans clearly are better off than they were when he took office in January 2021. He campaigned on a pledge to restore our nation’s “soul,” and I believe he has succeeded. He’s got more work to do and in my view he has earned the right to finish the job.

But, oh my … this campaign is as weird as any I have seen in all my years watching and, in some cases, covering these events. In fact, it’s the weirdest campaign I can remember.

The Republican nominee-in-waiting is cozying up to dictators. He calls the Hungarian thug/despot a “strong leader” and sounds as if he wants to govern the United States the way his good pal governs Hungary. Oh, my God in heaven. Please … no!

He threatens to dismantle NATO, all but pledges to look the other way while Russian thug Vladimir Putin “does whatever the hell he wants” by attacking a NATO ally while he prosecutes the war in Ukraine.

All of that and more run totally counter to American ideals. Yet the dipsh** continues to lead in public opinion polling.

Are we that stupid, that ignorant, that cynical as a nation to let this guy have his way? May we all come to our senses between now and Nov. 5, when Election Day arrives.

crime news, local news, national news, political news

Fani Willis is in the clear

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Leave it to a disgraced former Navy flag officer to engage in partisan hyperbole in reaction to a judge’s ruling on a Georgia district attorney seeking to prosecute a former POTUS for election interference crimes.

Ronny Jackson, whom the Navy inspector general demoted to captain after determining allegations of misconduct were true, said Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be “disbarred.” Why? Because she had a romantic relationship with a prosecutor on her team.

The judge in the case hearing the matter involving the ex-POTUS’s alleged interference has determined Willis can stay on the job but the lead prosecutor must go.

Jackson, who now represents the Texas Panhandle in the U.S. House, said the judge’s ruling only proves he’s a partisan. He wants Willis’s law license revoked.

Well, sh**! The doc should have his medical license revoked for his liberal dispensing of controlled drugs to clients who request them. That’s why he’s got the pejorative nickname of “Candy Man.”

Whatever. Willis will continue to do her work as prescribed by Georgia law and the state’s constitution.

As for Rep. Jackson, he ought to just butt the hell out and tend to the business of the Texas Panhandle … if he can figure out what’s important to the district and the region he hardly knows.

political news, religious news

No … God didn’t do this!

Of all the histrionics I have heard about why the MAGA crowd is so in love with the former POTUS who wants to return to office, only one proclamation actually offends me.

It goes like this: It was God’s will that put him in the office and God wants him to return.

Let us ponder that for a moment, or maybe two.

When you rely on the Almighty to justify your earthly political beliefs, you immediately run into serious trouble. Where in the world does it say that God looks the other way at someone breaking his sacred vow of fidelity to his wife? Don’t the evangelicals who back the former POTUS stand firm on the biblical view that cheating on one’s spouse is a sin worthy of high scorn?

Moreover, where does the Good Book allow for someone to on one side of his mouth proclaim to be someone of deep faith and then declare with the other side of his pie hole that he has never sought forgiveness for any sin he has committed?

Citing Scripture is a dangerous gambit. God also must have decreed that Joe Biden be elected president in 2020. That’s why he’s there now, in the office, making decisions on our behalf!

Those of us out here in Voter Land who also worship God understand the teaching laid out in the Bible far more than the guy who pretends to be faithful.

A critic of this blog ID’s himself (I presume it’s a guy) as Psalm 109:8. I looked that passage up. I says: “Let his years be few; let someone else take his position.” He believes President Biden should lose his job because the Bible suggests as much. Such devotion to Scripture. You know what the next verse says? “Let his children be fatherless; let his wife become a widow.” 

You want a reason to take great offense at some phony notion that God intended for the former Idiot in Chief to be elected? That is why one should never mix religion with politics.

national news, political news

How is this race even close?

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I admit that I am slow on the uptake at times, particularly when it comes to certain political trends.

The state of the current presidential campaign is my latest example.

I will go to my grave more than likely wondering how in the name of God Almighty that President Joe Biden finds himself fighting for his political life against the likely Republican nominee.

The GOP nimrod pledged to craft an infrastructure plan. He didn’t. He pledged to build a wall on the southern border and make Mexico pay for it. He didn’t do that either. He said he would declare war on the COVID pandemic and fight like hell against it. Oh, man, he failed miserably.

Biden succeeded him in 2021 and got Congress to pass an infrastructure bill and then defeated the pandemic. Yeah, the border crisis has worsened, but he’s redoubling his efforts there.

The economy is rockin ‘n rollin’ and Joe Biden can take some credit for that.

It should be a runaway. Biden should be facing the prospect of a landslide victory in November. He likely won’t get one.

The former Liar in Chief figures to make it a close race. How in the world a twice-impeached and multiple indicted candidate is hanging in there is beyond my capacity to understand.

national news, political news

Character no longer matters?

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Republicans once stood as those who believed in strong moral conduct and scorned those who got caught doing untoward things in public.

Do you remember those days? I sure do. They reached a full boil during the time Bill Clinton was seeking the presidency. Why, the so-called “moral majority” and those on the far right just couldn’t stomach the notion of someone who cheated on his wife becoming president of the United States.

They even countenanced the publishing of an alleged documentary called “The Clinton Chronicles” that purported to “prove” that Bill and Hillary Clinton plotted the murder of a close friend, Vince Foster … who in fact took his own life in a D.C. park.

Oh, how it has all changed.

What now passes for the Republican Party is set to nominate an individual for the presidential campaign who fails at every level possible the test the GOP once applied to candidates for the nation’s highest office.

He admits to cheating on his wives; he has been convicted of sexual abuse; he was impeached twice during his term as POTUS; he once bragged about grabbing women by their genitalia; he has said he never has sought forgiveness; he called for the execution of the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who had the temerity to criticize him over policy matters.

I could go on … but I won’t.

To be clear, I wasn’t a fan of the witch hunt launched against Bill Clinton back in the day. I am less of a fan now of the dimwit who wants to return to the Oval Office and serve as “your retribution” to those who have swallowed the swill he has offered.

And yet he has the support of the Republican National Committee, those who operate the machinery and a loudly vocal minority of voters who continue to outshout the rest of the nation.

The state of the current Republican Party makes me miss the former GOP … and that, I will tell you, is really saying something.

local news, political news, State news

‘Will of the House … ‘

Pete Laney’s name comes into my head when I think of the Texas speaker of the House of Representatives.

Laney is a Hale Center cotton farmer and businessman who once served as speaker … until Republicans took control of the Legislature. Then he got the boot prior to the 2003 Legislature.

One of Laney’s governing principles was to “let the will of the House” dictate the flow of legislation. He chose to avoid exerting the considerable power he possessed. My memory of the latest Democrat to hold the speaker’s gavel came to mind as I watched the current speaker, Republican Dade Phelan of Beaumont, seek to fend off an intraparty challenge from a first-time candidate named David Covey.

Phelan and Covey are headed for a runoff after neither man failed to win 50% plus one vote in the GOP primary. Covey finished first and Phelan finished second. Covey was endorsed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Why the AG endorsement? Because the “will of the House” produced an impeachment of the AG, who then was acquitted in the Senate trial.

Paxton is so angry at Phelan that he recruited Covey to run against the speaker who, by almost anyone’s reckoning, is a traditional GOP conservative.

Phelan has sought to tout the conservative legislation that the House has approved on his watch. That doesn’t matter to Paxton, who — along with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — calls Phelan a “liberal” speaker. They make me want to laugh — and then vomit!

Pete Laney established a reasonable template for how the Texas House speaker should conduct business. The House’s will resulted in an overwhelming impeachment vote on the way Paxton has performed as AG.

Paxton is angry that Phelan presided over a House of Representatives that saw fit to do its constitutional duty and rise up to effectively condemn the attorney general’s conduct.

I don’t know Phelan, nor do I know much about him. I know that he is the son of a prominent Beaumont developer who I did meet back when I worked in the Golden Triangle. I don’t know Covey, either, other than he is running for the first public office he has sought.

If the voters of Phelan’s legislative district have any brains, they’ll reject the trashy notion of replacing him just because he followed the path blazed by one of his predecessors as speaker.

He let the “will of the House” do its job.

local news, military news, political news

Media falling asleep

A longtime acquaintance of mine takes time every week to review the contents of the Amarillo Globe-News, a once-thriving newspaper in the city my wife and I called home for more than two decades.

It’s now a battered shell of its once-proud self. My friend noted the absence of a major breaking story that should have raised an eyebrow or two in what passes for the newsroom at the AGN.

What was missing: The story this week in so many print and electronic media sites about the demotion of former Rear Admiral and current Congressman Ronny Jackson after the Navy OIG found multiple unacceptable aspects of his service.

Jackson is serving his second term as a Republican congressman from the 13th Congressional District. He moved to the Texas Panhandle to run for the office when Mac Thornberry announced his retirement from Congress.

Dude once served as White House physician for two presidents: Barack Obama and the idiot who succeeded him. The Navy inspector general stripped Jackson of his rear admiral rank, busting him to captain after probing many allegations of serious misconduct.

This is the kind of story that should be splashed all over the front page of the local newspaper … except that the 13th District doesn’t have a local newspaper based in Amarillo. 

Jackson is a disgrace to his office and to the uniform he once wore. He continues to tout himself as a rear admiral on his website. The guy doesn’t even have the decency to tell his constituents the truth about his post-military standing. “As a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral with nearly three decades of military service I understand the commitment and sacrifices made by servicemen and servicewomen to serve our country,” the two-term Texas representative writes on his congressional website.

I am left to ask: Does character matter any longer to what passes for a formerly great political party … or to the media outlets that report on the conduct of those in power?