Category Archives: State news

State news

Texas GOP: certifiably loony!

Here is a statement from the Texas Republican Party, the dominant political organization in a state that comprises 29 million residents and drives a world-class economic engine.

“We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”

OK! I’ve already declared that the Texas GOP has gone bonkers. Its leadership is certifiably crazy.

I just want to reiterate that The Big Lie as regurgitated by the Texas Republican Party is a poisonous dose of rhetoric that does absolutely nothing but harm our cherished democratic process.

For the Texas Republican Party to swallow that snake oil — to my mind — is too damn close to sedition for comfort.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Uvalde’s loved ones need answers

Uvalde’s community of teachers, students and their loved ones and friends are demanding answers from the police who so far are acting as if they have many things to hide.

This is a travesty that needs instant repair.

The gunman who walked into Robb Elementary School and killed 21 children and teachers did so with apparent ease. Why in the name of truth and justice aren’t the cops telling us the whole truth about what wend down a month ago in that tightly knit South Texas community?

The Uvalde school district chief of police Pete Arredondo is on administrative leave. From where I sit, he needs to be fired. Department of Public Safety director Stephen McCraw is only a little more forthcoming, but he, too, is holding back. The Uvalde Police Department also has a dog in this fight, but where are UPD’s statements of clarification?

This outrage has gone on long enough!

The community is grieving. So is the rest of the state and the nation. We are getting some legislative help in the form of congressional action aimed at stemming the violence. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

I want to offer a snippet from the Dallas Morning News editorial that states: The families of the victims and every Texan deserve better from law enforcement agencies and politicians whose prime responsibility is to serve the public interest, not their own. The common public interest must be to determine how and why so many died when faster action in line with nationally accepted active shooter protocols would have saved lives.

Uvalde was an ‘abject failure,’ but there’s more to the story (dallasnews.com)

The cops sign on to “protect and serve.” They offered little protection for those 19 children and the two teachers who died in that massacre. They are derelict in their service to the state that is demanding answers to what created what has been called “an abject failure.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, State news

Compromise can work

Ted Cruz keeps demonstrating why he is such a loathsome politician, suggesting repeatedly why it’s better in his sick mind to go down on principle rather than seeking common ground.

The Texas Republican junior U.S. senator was one of 34 GOP senators to vote “no” on a bill crafted in part by his Texas Republican colleague, John Cornyn.

Cornyn was the lead GOP negotiator on a bipartisan effort to seek legislative remedy to the gun violence that continues to break our hearts, such as what happened not long ago in Uvalde.

OK, the bill ain’t perfect. It’s a start, though, toward curbing violent outbursts.

The National Rifle Association, naturally, has condemned the effort. The NRA doesn’t want anyone to mess around with what it says are constitutional guarantees of firearm ownership. Except that the bill doesn’t stop law-abiding Americans from owning a firearm. Ted Cruz is in the NRA’s hip pocket.

The Texas Tribune reports: The legislation does not restrict any rights of existing gun owners — a nonstarter for Senate Republicans. Instead, it would enhance background checks for gun purchasers younger than 21; make it easier to remove guns from people threatening to kill themselves or others, as well as people who have committed domestic violence; clarify who needs to register as a federal firearms dealer; and crack down on illegal gun trafficking, including so-called straw purchases, which occur when the actual buyer of a firearm uses another person to execute the paperwork to buy on their behalf.

The legislation includes $11 billion for mental health services and $2 billion for community-based antiviolence programs. It also includes money to help young people access mental health services via telemedicine, money for more school-based mental health centers and support for suicide hotlines.

U.S. Senate advances bipartisan gun legislation backed by Cornyn | The Texas Tribune

Is this the stuff of radicalism? Hardly. It’s a reasonable start.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

All together now: No secession for Texas!

Let’s all say this together, shall we? Texas cannot — under the law — secede from the United States of America!

Texas tried that once. It didn’t work out. We joined several other southern states to go to war with the United States because slave owners wanted to maintain the right to own fellow human beings as property. The Civil War came to an end in April 1865 and Congress wrote a law that prohibited secession. Period, man!

That didn’t dissuade the Texas Republican Party, though, from delivering a resolution at the end of its conference in Houston this past weekend that calls for a statewide referendum aimed at “achieving Texas independence.”

I have declared already that the Texas GOP has gone ’round the bend. This resolution only strengthens my argument.

The secession argument keeps rearing its disgusting head whenever right-wingers get pi**ed off about something, or anything! They want to remove the state from the clutches of federal control, believing foolishly that the state can solve its own problems.

“It is now time that the People of Texas are allowed the right to decide their own future,” state Rep. Kyle Biedermann, R-Fredericksburg, said in a statement announcing the resolution at the GOP conference.

The Texas Tribune reports: “The legality of seceding is problematic,” Eric McDaniel, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Texas Tribune in 2016. “The Civil War played a very big role in establishing the power of the federal government and cementing that the federal government has the final say in these issues.”

Texas can’t secede from the U.S. Here’s why. | The Texas Tribune

Yeah, a “very big role,” indeed.

The Confederacy committed the ultimate act of treason in declaring war on the U.S. government. The Civil War cost the nation more than 600,000 lives in the bloodiest conflict in its history.

President Lincoln’s second inaugural speech in March 1865 — a month before he would be assassinated — declared his intention to heal the wounds that ripped the nation apart. “With malice toward none and charity for all,” he said, the nation must move forward together.

Now we hear from the lunatics of Abraham Lincoln’s own Republican Party wanting to secede once again. Why? Because they don’t want the feds setting the rules all Americans must follow.

Do you see what I mean, therefore, about how nuts today’s Republican Party has become?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Texas GOP: gone bonkers

It’s as official as I can determine it: the Texas Republican Party has spun off its axis, it is out of its collective mind, it has been taken over by the Donald J. Trump cultists, the believers in The Big Lie.

The state GOP has concluded its convention in Houston and has declared that President Biden is not “legitimately” elected to the nation’s highest office. The 2020 election, the state GOP said in its resolution, is too “rife” with fraud.

Now comes the question: Does the Republican Party have proof of that preposterous allegation?

The answer: No! It does not!

Hey, the state GOP don’t need no stinkin’ proof! It just swallows the swill served up by the former Snake Oil Salesman in Chief, who has defamed the nation’s electoral system since the moment he lost the 2020 election.

Fed up and fired up: Texas Republicans meet in a climate of mistrust, conspiracy and victimhood | The Texas Tribune

The convention had plenty of lowlights. Such as when conventioneers booed U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, as staunch and devoted a Republican as anyone in the convention hall. His claim to infamy? He sought to work with Democrats in crafting a bill that seeks to curb gun violence. You can’t do that, senator … say the diehard cultists who now dominate the Texas Republican Party.

I’ll be brutally honest. I never thought I would see this day in the evolution of the Texas political system. I moved to Texas when it was still dominated nominally by conservative Democrats. Then the “red tide” began to swell in the mid- to late 1980s. Mainstream Republicans began winning public office.

A Republican governor, George W. Bush, scored a lot of points across the spectrum through his ability to work with Democrats who still controlled the Legislature in the mid-1990s.

Those days are gone. I hope not forever. We have now a state GOP dominated by know-nothings, fruitcakes and nut jobs … which more or less mirrors the Republican National Committee.

The believe in The Big Lie. They purposely spread its falsehoods. Therefore, the Texas Republican Party is populated by liars.

Shame on them, and shame on those who put the liars in charge.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Where is the police chief?

Come out, come out, wherever you are … Pete Arredondo!

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District chief of police is missing in action. Meanwhile, the community he took an oath to protect — namely the parents of the students in the school system — are demanding answers from the embattled chief.

Arredondo was the man in charge of the police response to the madman who strolled into Robb Elementary School brandishing an AR-15 and who then killed 19 precious children and two heroic teachers.

Uvalde school police Chief Pete Arredondo faces calls for accountability | The Texas Tribune

A grieving community is demanding to know a number of answers relating to a blunder that Arredondo committed. He waited more than one hour before sending the cops in to confront the shooter.

To be clear, Arredondo shouldn’t bear this blame alone. The Department of Public Safety also was on hand. So was the U.S. Border Patrol. And, oh yes, we have the Uvalde municipal police department.

What we have developing is a clusterf*** of tragic proportions.

But we have one man who can provide answers to a grieving community, state and nation.

Pete Arredondo needs to speak to us.

As in right now!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Cruz: loathsome to the max

There is no way for me to deny what I have believed firmly since the day Ted Cruz took office in 2013 as a U.S. Republican senator representing my family and me in Texas.

It is that he is the most loathsome politician I can think of this side of, say, Donald John Trump.

Cruz continues to make gurgling noises about wanting to run for president in 2024. He tried it once already, in 2016, He remained the last man standing in a crowded field that eventually succumbed to the cult following that gathered around Trump.

He once called Trump a “sniveling coward.” He then climbed aboard the Trump hay wagon, where he’s been sitting ever since.

The latest capper — gosh, there have been so many low points in this clown’s Senate career — is still unfolding. The lunatic shot up Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. He killed 19 precious children and two of their teachers. President Biden is trying to rally a grief-stricken nation to “do something” about gun violence.

Cruz’s response? He bloviates that the “radical Democrats” are seeking to “disarm Americans.” Oh, and then the rat boasts about his visit to Uvalde “the day after the shooting.” Big … deal!

The moron has zero public standing with me on that one, given how he hightailed it out of Texas in February 2021 while Texans were freezing to death in that horrific winter blast. Where was Ted? Basking in the sun with his family in Cancun!

I am sick and tired of this clown masquerading as a responsible public official when he is nothing more than a self-serving frontrunner seeking to further his own agenda.

Someone will have to show me a single piece of meaningful legislation with Cancun Ted’s name on it. Anyone?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Tragedy transcends politics

Some moments of crisis would seemingly dispel any notion of partisanship, or of division between the major political parties and those who lead them.

Such as, oh, the massacre of school children and their teachers.

It happened again the other day in Uvalde, Texas. President and Mrs. Biden came to Texas to hug the necks of victims of the madman who walked into Robb Elementary School and slaughtered his victims before a Border Patrol tactical squad shot him to death.

My question, though, is this: Why weren’t the Democratic president and the Republican governor, Greg Abbott sitting next to each other, sharing in the nation’s grief, pledging a joint effort to rid the nation of this scourge of senseless, insane gun violence?

Abbott has decided to forgo any such appearance with a man he criticizes at will. Biden deserves a brickbat, too, as he could have extended an invitation to meet with the governor while he was visiting the victims in Uvalde. He didn’t.

I don’t expect these men to share a solution. They damn sure should share the goal of ending the violence. Of seeking common ground. They could proclaim their joint dedication to putting an end to this madness while vowing to work out the details later. Is that an impossible task?

The great chasm seems only to widen these days when crisis strikes. It mustn’t be that way.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Crowd reaction portends … what?

Donald J. Trump is fond of holding rallies, listening to the noise coming from a sizable crowd … and then using the size and sound of his rallies as a measure of his political standing.

That’s foolishness, to be sure. However, if we apply that metric to the present day, consider this:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ventured for the second day in a row to Uvalde, the site of the horrific slaughter of 19 school children and two teachers this past week.

He got a rousing welcome, all right … of boos! The noise was loud and sustained.

The stricken Uvalde residents want the governor to do something to end the violence. They speak for a lot of other Texans, not to mention even more millions of Americans who are shaken to their core by the violence that erupted against those precious children and their protectors.

They blame Gov. Abbott for refusing to act. They are taking their anger out, too, on legislators who continue to dance to the tune called by the gun lobby … and ignoring the cadence set by their real bosses, the voters!

It is long past the time for our elected representatives to “represent” the interests of voters, most of whom favor a legislative remedy to the carnage that continues to cause undue grief and misery.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Arm teachers? Seriously?

There he stood, yapping and yammering about how stricter gun laws don’t do a thing to keep us safer. Instead, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said in the wake of the Uvalde school massacre, we need to arm teachers and let them settle the issue of a shooter marching down the halls.

What an absolute crock!

The notion of allowing teachers to pack heat in the classroom is preposterous. I realize that in Texas, some school districts allow such nonsense. Cruz, the Republican junior senator, wants to expand it. He says, in effect, more guns make us safer. Really … Ted?

They do not!

Indeed, Texas is one of those states that no longer requires anyone to demonstrate a level of proficiency with a firearm. We have that law enacted in 2021 called “constitutional carry” of firearms. Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill that made it legal for anyone who doesn’t have a criminal conviction on his or her record to own a gun.

How, then, does allowing teachers to carry guns into the classroom any safer? In my view, it doesn’t.

Let’s understand something about law enforcement officers who are licensed as well to carry firearms. They must pass continual tests during their careers to prove their proficiency. How can we expect a teacher to always know what to do in case of an emergency to react properly? We cannot!

I am going to continue to stand on the notion that there must be a legislative remedy that lawmakers of good will and those a conscience can find that doesn’t run counter to the Second Amendment to our Constitution.

Politicians such as Ted Cruz continue to lambaste those on the other side for “politicizing” tragedies such as Uvalde, or Sandy Hook, or Columbine or Aurora while at the same time leaning on their own political benefactors as they refuse to discuss or debate possible solutions within Congress or in state legislatures.

Who, then, is playing politics while our children continue to die?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com