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crime news, local news

Museum always breathtaking

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DALLAS — It doesn’t matter how many times I have come to this exhibit — or how many times I will see it in the future — every visit fills me with awe about one of this country’s most profound tragedies.

I came here this week with a dear friend to tour the Sixth Floor Museum, which commemorates the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. Sixty-two years have passed since that horrifying day and I continue to be struck by how that single senseless act sent a great city’s emotional psyche spiraling into the sewer.

I saw for the first time on this visit a copy of the Dallas Morning News editorial page published on the day of JFK’s visit. The editorial referred to the city’s “partisan cleavage” that would disappear hopefully that day as it welcomed the 35th president of the United States. Indeed, there had been fear that right-wing activists might protest the president’s visit, accusing him of being “soft” on the Soviet Union.

Well, it turned out the world was looking in the wrong direction. Lee Harvey Oswald turned out to be an avowed Marxist who two days later met his own end when a night club owner, Jack Ruby, shot him in the gut as he was being transferred from the city jail to the county lockup.

I continue to be struck by the quietness of the large crowd of museum-goers who were milling around the sixth floor, looking at the artifacts, reading the text on the walls explaining JFK’s legacy, his record, his accomplishments and even where he fell short during the 1,000 days of his presidency. I found myself whispering information into the ear of my friend; I didn’t want to make any sort of unwanted noise. I felt as though we were in a church sanctuary.

I likely won’t ever buy into the notion that John Kennedy should rank among the nation’s great presidents. One thousand days doesn’t give anyone much of a chance to carve out a lasting legislative legacy. He had some success and he fell short a time or two during his time in office.

He did bring a huge wellspring of hope to a nation that needed it in the moment. That hope was blown to bits by the gunman aiming his rifle from the sixth floor of a building that reportedly was destined to be torn down.

I’ll be back again someday. I cannot get enough of that exhibit.

crime news, national news, political news

Closer to the tipping point?

Every day, it seems, we appear to be creeping closer to the tipping point in which Donald J. Trump says something that will spell the end of his failed presidency.

He crossed another huge line this week by saying out loud and in public that six Democratic members of Congress are guilty of sedition, a crime that carries a punishment of death. That’s right. The POTUS has declared that six opposing members of Congress should be executed for speaking out against the orders that Trump is issuing.

What in the world is happening to this nation? Why are we allowing this moron to get away with these sorts of idiotic pronouncements? Here’s the worst of it: Not even a president of the United States who calls for the execution of political opposition could be convicted by a Senate controlled by members of his own political party … because they are in tacit agreement with this dipshit!

Public opinon polling suggests that Trump’s support among Americans is collapsing as he continues to scarf up more power for the executive branch. The polls aren’t “fake,” as Trump contends. They are real and they suggest that Trump’s MAGA base is shrinking before our eyes. When the likes of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, D-Ga., turn on Trump then you know you are witnessing a sea change.

Suppose there was a chance to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which contains a clause about removing the president who is deemed incompetent. Does anyone believe that a majority of this executive branch comprising diehard Trump loyalists is going to sign a document declaring the boss to be unfit for the office? It won’t happen.

That’s why I believe we’re only getting a lot closer to some tipping point that will spell the end of this moron’s time in office.

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A new phase awaits Trump

Donald Trump appears to be losing his vise grip on the Republican Party, which to my way of think portends a new phase in Trump’s term in the White House.

It well might mean — and I am not going to predict this will happen — that sooner or later Trump is going to realize he is just taking up space in the Oval Office … and he might just pack up and leave the people’s house for good.

The House of Reps voted 427 to 1 to call for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files that contain the names of many officials with apparent knowledge of the hideous conduct Epstein was engaged in with underage girls. Is there a more bipartisan vote than that?

Furthermore, we see the likes of Rep. Marjorie Taylore Greene, R-Ga., declaring she is divorcing herself from the MAGA movement, which she believes has strayed way too far into the weeds. She recently declared an end to the hateful rhetoric she has spouted and has taken a solemn vow to be more issues-oriented in her criticism of policies with which she disagrees.

For that, I salute her. She has taken a sharp turn away from the path being blazed by Trump.

I have vowed to avoid diagnosing Trump’s blathering, pretending to be able to detect dementia. But, damn! Dude keeps saying some really weird stuff that makes me scratch my own noggin, wondering if the guy’s got it all up there. There well might be others in a position to act if they, too, determine he is unfit to make command decisions.

The courts are standing firm against the autocratic tide that keeps sweeping against our government. Trump-appointed judges are realizing that their benefactor doesn’t know the law, doesn’t care to learn about the law and that he must be held accountable for his ignorance.

That’s a good sign that the Constitution is doing what the founders set it up to do.

crime news

Release Epstein files now! All of ’em!

Where do we stand today in the yammering of the Epstein Files, which contain the names of some the nation’s biggest political hitters and their potential relationship with one of the more infamous pedophiles any of us have seen since The Flood?

Congressional Democrats have gotten the name of the final member of Congress to sign a discharge petition that would require release of the files. OK! What’s with the delay?

I am one patriotic American who wants to know whether the president of the United States had more than a passing aquaintance with the late Jeffrey Epstein. That’s the sole issue for me. I also do not believe that Donald Trump engaged in illegal sexual activity with one of Epstein’s underage female victims. Then again, I am basing my belief on the hope that we don’t have pedophile serving as POTUS.

Releasing all the Epstein files should tell us what we need to know. We have received dribs and drabs of info on Epstein, and many of his relationships. They include names like Trump, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.

We need to understand fully whether Donald Trump knew about the illegal deeds being done at Epstein’s behest … and then looked the other way.

Release the files … now!

crime news

MAGA festers in ignorance

The ignorance of the morons who comprise many of Donald Trump’s MAGA base continues to astonish me in ways I never thought possible.

New York City voters elected a Muslim, a democratic socialist as its next mayor. What was the reaction among some of the MAGA cultists who heard this news?

One of them, a member of Congress, said out loud that he wants Zohair Mamdani deported. Yep. He wants to banish him to the country of his birth. I believe it’s Sudan.

One little problem with that idiotic notion. Mamdani has been a naturalized U.S. citizen since he was boy. You can’t deport a U.S. citizen. Good grief, the man wants to live in the United States. He wants to pay his taxes here. He wants to educate his children here. He wants to govern the nation’s largest, most sophisticated, most cosmopolitan city.

This MAGA idiocy reminds of when Nikki Haley, the Republican governor South Carolina, agreed to take down the Confederate flags in her state, drawing calls for her deportation. Wait! She was born in South Carolina to parents of Indian descent. I guess her parentage made the all-American governor a deportation target.

You cannot negotiate with a political movement that comprises so many of these morons!

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Waiting for the wake up call

I will not venture a guess on when it might occur, but I am waiting for the wake up call to ring in the ears of the Republicans who occupy most of the seats in both chambers of Congress.

The call will come from the coscience of a once-great political party. It will sound the alarm that GOP members I hope hear and take seriously.

The wake up call is bound to remind the GOP majority for who it is working. It isn’t the man who keeps the chair warm in the Oval Office. They work for rank and file Americans, even those of us who didn’t vote for them and those who detest the idea that Donald Trump is being paid 400 grand annually to serve as POTUS.

One must presume that Trump might do something that is so outrageous that most members of Congress no longer can support that dipshit. President Nixon found the drop-dead moment in 1974 when the Supreme Court ordered him to turn over the Watergate tapes that had him ordering the CIA to cover up the Watergate caper.

Is such a moment awaiting Donald Trump? The man appears to have buffaloed the political right wing.

But I will hold out hope.

crime news, legal news

Irony runs thick

You want irony? I’ve got a huge dose of it for you to ponder. It comes via testimony from a sitting U.S. senator from Rhode Island.

Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat, reminded his Senate Judiciary Committee colleagues the other day of the irony committed by AG Pam Bondi in testimony before the panel.

She had just secured an indictment of former FBI Director Jim Comey on a specious charge that he lied before the committee, committing an act of perjury. The indictment is so flimsy it likely won’t be tried. It was handed over on a total of two pages. That’s it! Comey allegedly lied about who told him what about a pending hearing. It’s pure crap.

Oh, but wait. Bondi then told the same Senate panel that Whitehouse accepted a favor from a donor, a charge that Whitehouse says is “demonstrably false.” He said a first-year law student could have looked up the facts and determined that the favor didn’t occur.

Therefore, Whitehouse said, Bondi committed the very same crime for which Comey has been indicted.

Do we indict the attorney general? If she isn’t above the law … then why not?

crime news

Portland is not ‘at war’

A letter to the Dallas Morning News editorial page published this past weekend confirms what I have been saying all along about the beautiful city where I came iinto this world nearly 76 years ago.

It’s not “at war” and crime is not running “rampant” through the city. Yet the faker masquerading as POTUS would have us believe the city is being torn asunder by gangs, drug peddlers, killers, sex traffickers and assorted nasty individuals who find “sanctuary” in the City of Roses.

Nothing like is happening.

A couple from Dallas made their first trip to Portland recently and found it to be a most pleasant place to visit, to hang out, to enjoy a good meal and a smashing cup of coffee. Donald Trump wants to send in the troops to quell a population that needs no quelling.

I’ll just say this up front: Trump is a rotten son of a bitch. He is politicizing this issue beyond all that is reasonable. He is targeting so-called “blue cities” run by Democrats.

Portland isn’t crime free. Name me a city that is and I’ll consider you to be as big a liar as Trump himself. It is not splitting at the seams.

Let’s cool the overheated rhetoric, shall we? Oh, and how about getting Trump to work on getting government back on the job doing the deeds for which we spend our hard-earned tax money.

crime news

Trying to keep it real

Keeping a proper perspective on the news of the day can be a challenge, particularly when it involves anything involving Donald John Trump.

A big-time fan of Trump got gunned down this week in Utah Valley University. Charlie Kirk died when he was shot in the neck by someone who reportedly disagreed with his right-wing screeds. Kirk was just 31 years of age and he leaves behind his wife and two young children.

Trump’s reaction was to order every flag in the nation to fly at half-staff; he flew Kirk’s body back to DC aboard the plane used to ferry the vice president; Trump is going to honor Kirk’s memory with the Presidential Medal of Freedom; the news networks are covering this story with the kind of attention reserved for the deaths of heads of state.

Charlie Kirk was a political hack. Yes, his death is a tragedy and I join the Trumpkins in mourning his senseless and grotesque murder. Trump surely didn’t need to react in the manner he did, particularly after he ignored the assassination of a Minnesota state senator and her husband, both of whom were anti-Trumpsters; or the deaths of the two children shot by a dipshit who killed them as they were praying in a Minneapolis church.

The outpouring of grief for a political operative — who’s never been elected to public office — is too much. It’s time to dial it back.

crime news

Pray this isn’t the new normal

Let’s bow our heads in prayer for a moment, and pray that the death of a right-wing activist by someone seemingly upset with what he said doesn’t become the new normal in this still-great nation of ours.

Charlie Kirk is dead from a gunshot fired by someone who took aim from a rooftop and fired a single shot into Kirk’s neck. Kirk was a young and ardent fan of Donald Trump and a spokesman for the MAGA movement. His views were repugnant to many of us who heard them.

But one individual, reportedly a male, took matters far too seriously. Kirk is gone. Trump wants to give him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he has ordered flags to fly at half staff. Is all of this too much? Yes. It is.

However, what also was far too much was the violence that ended Kirk’s short life. I am going to pray that we haven’t evolved into a nation where people can pick up a gun, aim it at a political figure we don’t like and then blow that figure away … because he or she says something we find disagreeable.

I am hoping that Donald Trump will speak to the nation about this tragedy. I want him to find the words somewhere that will dispel the intensity of people’s feelings toward those with whom we disagree.

Short of that, I will keep praying for the soul of our nation.