Someone might have to pass some smelling salts to help revive me if what I read actually comes true.
It is that Rep. Ronny Jackson, the Amarillo Republican who’s curried favor with the Donald Trump cabal of kooks, might run for the U.S. Senate in 2026. Yep, the one-time White House doc might challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in four years presuming Cornyn decides to seek re-election.
That means if Jackson actually wins in 2026 then the whole state will have to endure his tweets, his ongoing assault against those who disagree with his MAGA-loving demagoguery.
The guy is a carpetbagging clown show barker who moved into the 13th Congressional District specifically to run for Congress from the Texas Panhandle.
Jackson is a Trumpkin through and through. He doesn’t deserve re-election to his House seat, let alone election to a seat in what once was known as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
Lindsey Graham once thought and talked like a traditional Republican, such as the time he said that abortion laws needed to be settled by states.
Now, though, the South Carolina Republican is ratcheting up the argument, pitching for a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Which is it, Sen. Graham, state issue or national prerogative?
Politicians on both sides of the divide have criticized Graham’s about-face. Then, of course, are those of us who dislike the government dictating how a woman can govern her own body.
Public opinion polls suggest Graham is on the losing side of this debate. He isn’t dissuaded. Graham believes the nationwide ban will become law despite those polls and despite some election results that suggest Americans want to retain a woman’s right to choose whether to end a pregnancy.
I will give Graham some credit for recognizing the need for excepting cases involving rape and incest from the ban. Certain statewide bans, such as what’s been enacted in Texas, require girls impregnated by their lecherous uncles or fathers to carry their pregnancies to full term.
However, Graham is getting way ahead of himself if he believes most Americans will line up behind what he’s proposing. According to the Huffington Post: “I am confident the American people would accept a national ban on abortion at 15 weeks,” Graham told “Fox News Sunday.” “And to those who suggest that being pro-life is losing politics, I reject that.”
Instead, he has joined the wacky wing of the Republican Party that now wants to nationalize what used to be part of the GOP mantra: it is better to leave some things up to the states than to have the feds impose their iron will.
First, I need to stipulate that I never have aspired to be King of the World, but if somehow were it to happen, there are a few things I would change about the current political climate.
For starters:
I would limit the U.S. president to a single six-year term, kind of like what they do in Mexico. Presidents there run for a single term and then they’re gone.
What is the advantage here? The president doesn’t campaign for re-election, for starters, and he or she then gets to concentrate solely on legislative agendas.
Too often presidents take office at the start of their first term and begin making speeches aimed appealing to voting blocs that would favor them in a run for their second term. It’s a fairly bipartisan affliction, so my friends on the left can accuse me all they want of offering a “both sides do it” escape clause. Too bad. I just happen to believe it’s true.
I offer this change while reminding readers of this blog that I oppose term limits already. I subscribe to the notion that elections serve as “term limits” if voters believe the officeholder doesn’t deserve to be re-elected.
Furthermore, I would like to see terms of House members extended from two years to three or maybe four years. That, too, removes the need for House members to begin their re-election quest immediately upon taking office.
A congressman once told me that he had to dedicate a certain number of hours every week to campaign fundraising, which took time away from research and legislating. It was an unwritten rule, he said, but one that a congressman or woman dare not ignore if he or she wanted to serve beyond that single term.
I wouldn’t trifle with the length of U.S. Senate terms. No need to extend them beyond the six years to which we elect them. Besides, doing so might fill a senator with a notion that since he or she is elected to serve longer than the president that he or she is more important than the commander in chief. We’ve got too many senatorial grandstanders already.
None of this is likely to happen. I am just venting over what I see is serious damage to the political fabric.
Of course, none of this answers the need to stop elected certifiable dumbasses to high public office. We’ll have to deal seriously with that matter later.
President Biden made some news tonight during his interview with CBS News’ Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes.”
The president kinda walked back his earlier statement in which he declared he would run for a second term in 2024. In the broadcast tonight, he said he “intends” to seek re-election but that a final decision hasn’t been made.
Hmm. Well, what does one say about that?
It tells me that Joe Biden is keeping his options as open as possible, given the topic that Pelley was discussing with the president.
His age. Biden is the oldest man ever to hold the office of POTUS. The president expressed supreme confidence in his ability to do the job. “Watch me,” he urged Pelley.
OK, I get it, Mr. President. I don’t have a personal issue with Biden walking back a bit his earlier declaration of a re-election effort. I think it’s smart for the president to say only what he intends to do.
A lot of things can happen. They do and this president, who’s been victimized by fate and tragedy in unimaginable ways, at this moment is no longer a declared candidate for president in 2024.
Amarillo city officials are going on trial very soon in which they will have to defend the legitimacy of a multimillion-dollar effort to deliver a new municipal complex of offices and convention space.
The lawsuit comes from businessman Alex Fairly. The trial will be in a Potter County district court. Fairly believes the city acted illegally in issuing $260 million in “anticipation notes.”
I am not going to assess whether the city’s actions broke the law. I am, though, in a position to comment on the timing of the issuance.
You see, voters already had spoken decisively in November 2020 when they rejected a $275 million general obligation bond issue to — that’s right — revamp the Civic Center and relocate City Hall. The City Council didn’t seem to care about what voters decided.
So, it acted without voters’ approval by issuing those anticipation notes. The debt load carried by the notes is virtually identical to the load that voters rejected.
I hate saying this, because for years I was a staunch supporter of City Council initiatives, but the decision to supersede voters’ rejection smacks too much of municipal arrogance.
It’s the timing of the issuance juxtaposed with the rejection of the bond issue that ought to rankle residents. Fairly has intimated, further, that the issuance of the debt notes was done without adequate public notice, giving residents a chance to comment publicly on what they thought about the project.
To be sure, if I still lived in Amarillo and had a chance to vote on the bond issue in November 2020 I likely would have voted “yes” on the city request. I can argue all day and into the night about the need for the city to upgrade its Civic Center and find a new site for City Hall. Most voters, though, said “no” to the proposal.
For the city to then come back and issue the anticipation notes — which do not require voter approval — well, plays right into the righteous anger that fuels a lot of voters’ interest in government.
Rick Perry might have been a politician ahead of his time a dozen years ago as he sought re-election to his post as Texas governor.
Perry announced to the state’s editorial boards — and I was a member of one of them in 2010 — that he wouldn’t visit newspaper offices to seek editorial pages’ endorsement.
Why, he would just “talk directly to Texans” and not mess with newspapers’ editorial pages.
Well, you know what? Perry’s strategy worked. Virtually every newspaper in Texas endorsed the Democrat running against Perry that year, former Houston mayor Bill White. The Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked at the time, was among the papers that gave its “blessing” to White.
I will never forget the reaction we got from our readers. Many of them responded to us as if we had endorsed the Son of Satan himself.
What’s more, Perry was able to cruise to re-election, much as he had done in every year he ran for the office.
What’s the lesson here? It is that voters no longer rely on newspaper editors’ “wisdom” in helping them decide how to cast their ballots. In many cases, readers’ minds are made up. They have heard all they need to hear about candidates and their views on pressing issues of the day.
This trend saddens me. I edited opinion pages in Amarillo for nearly 18 years, for nearly 11 years in Beaumont and for a half-dozen years in Oregon, City, Ore., before my career ended in August 2012. I was proud of virtually all the endorsements we made during those years. Moreover, I took pride in the respectful reaction we received — even from readers who disagreed with what we offered.
Newspapers aren’t as “respected” these days as they used to be. That, too, saddens me greatly. Those of us who write for newspapers, be they major metro dailies or community papers, aren’t “the enemy of the people.” We seek to do our job with fairness and accuracy. When we offer commentary, we do so with the same noble motives.
Rick Perry didn’t see it that way when he stiffed editorial boards’ desire to visit with him on why he sought to return to public office.
I have reached what I think is a reasonable conclusion about some readers of this blog and those who are generally critical of the media.
I will try to explain myself.
Critics of this blog base their criticism on their perception of my politics. I lean left. Critics generally lean right. I have been relentless in my criticism of Donald J. Trump. Critics seem willing to give him a pass on his hideous behavior.
My conclusion is that they only are interested in what I say about politics in general or about Trump in particular.
I have sought over several years writing on www.highplainsblogger.com to cover a wide range of issues. Some of them go beyond pure politics. Some posts deal with real life and the joys and sorrows that go with living a long time.
I want to single out one critic who, when I write about my experiences serving our great nation in uniform, often does offer a word of thanks and gratitude … and I always appreciate his saying so.
Generally, though, he and others save their most intense fire for when I pontificate about the many failings of our immediate past POTUS.
How do I deal with it? I let ’em have their say. I’ve already delivered my view. I rarely have a need or certainly a desire to engage in an argument with someone whose mind is as made up as mine.
Vladimir Putin fits neatly into a number of descriptive niches. He is arrogant, egotistical, power-hungry, delusional … all those sorts of things.
I do not believe the Russian goon is stupid.
Which brings me to the fundamental question of the moment: Will the former top Soviet Union spy ignore the reasons why the USSR and the United States adhered during the Cold War to a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction in avoiding the use of nuclear weapons?
Russian forces are getting their asses kicked by Ukrainians on the battlefield as Ukraine is fighting to regain territory taken by the invaders several months ago. Putin launched an illegal, immoral and unconscionable war against Ukraine. He had presumed his forces would sashay into Kyiv in a few days, toss out Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and install a government to their liking.
It ain’t working out that way.
Now we hear reports of Putin pondering the use of chemical or (worse!) tactical nukes against Ukraine. President Biden, who has led the allied effort to resist Putin’s aggression, says, “Don’t … don’t … don’t” even think about it.
Donald Trump’s legal difficulties should not be seen as some sort of uniquely American experience.
Other nations’ former presidents have been arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prison for their crimes. How is it that Donald Trump so far has avoided being read his Miranda rights, forced to don the cuffs and marched off to the slammer?
I think it’s because we ourselves as a nation that treats defendants with dignity. We don’t rush to arrest someone formerly in power. We are an “indispensable nation” that values the “rule of law.”
It’s fair to ask whether Donald Trump would treat other defendants with dignity. Or would he lead campaign rally cheers to “lock him up”?
We all know the answer.
Still, I get the feeling that time is not necessarily Donald Trump’s friend.
Didn’t this country found itself as the “Land of the Free,” a nation that prided itself on delivering freedom to all Americans, a land that honored our civil liberties?
I ask because of what has transpired in recent months with the U.S. Supreme Court rescinding one of our sacred civil liberties, the one that granted women the right to determine how to control their own bodies, as covered in the rights of privacy spelled out in the U.S. Constitution.
The court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that made abortion legal in this country. Over the nearly five decades of its existence, legal scholars and other courts had determined that Roe was “settled law.” In other words, we couldn’t mess with what had become part of the nation’s legal fabric.
Not so, according to the current Supreme Court.
When the court rescinded Roe v. Wade it essentially determined that on this key issue, women are longer free to make critical, gut-wrenching and highly emotional decisions involving their own bodies.
There doesn’t appear to be any remedies available, given the current makeup of the U.S. Senate and certainly given the ideological bent of the court, with its six conservative justices. Senate Democrats want to “codify” legality of abortion legislatively, but they would have to overcome a certain Republican filibuster; they need 60 votes to end such an obstructionist act. A 50-50 Senate split isn’t likely to bend.
Oh, but wait. The midterm election could give Democrats an actual majority, enabling them perhaps to toss out the filibuster. We’ll have to see.
I just am baffled at the frontal attack that the GOP and their allies on the Supreme Court have leveled against a fundamental principle established by our nation’s founders. It is that American citizens enjoy the freedom to make decisions that only they can make for themselves.
I would say that a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy qualifies as a critical component of living in the Land of the Free.
