Monthly Archives: August 2023

local news

More to the story? Hmm …

You can describe me as not entirely surprised that there might be more to a story involving a Republican congressman who — reportedly — helped someone in distress in a rodeo outside of Amarillo.

It turns out there might be more to examine in the conduct of Rep. Ronny Jackson.

Reports initially stated that Jackson rushed to aid a teenager who was having a seizure in a rodeo in Carson County. Now comes word from Sheriff Tam Terry that Jackson threatened him politically if he didn’t examine the incident further.

According to the Texas Tribune: After the congressman was released, he demanded Carson County Sheriff Tam Terry call him and investigate the incident. During that call, Terry, a Republican, said that Jackson warned him that he would “bury me in the next election.”

Moreover, we now hear from a police report that sheriff’s deputies tried to clear the area, but that Jackson refused their orders, screaming at deputies who — according to reports — were merely trying to do their job.

Jackson’s office also said that the congressman had not been drinking, but wait … now we hear that he was seen imbibing in adult beverages prior to all hell breaking loose.

“Congressman Jackson was not drinking and was prevented from giving medical care in a potentially life-threatening situation due to overly aggressive and incompetent actions by the local authorities present at the time of the incident,” said Kate Lair, a spokesperson for Jackson. “Again, he was asked to help the teenager when no other uniformed medics were present. Congressman Jackson, as a trained ER physician, will not apologize for sparing no effort to help in a medical emergency, especially when the circumstances were chaotic and the local authorities refused to help the situation.”

Ronny Jackson cursed at, threatened officers in altercation at rodeo | The Texas Tribune

What the spokeswoman does not acknowledge, of course, is that Jackson has been perceived by many as a political hothead since taking office in the 13th Congressional District in 2021. He has been heard many times making hysterical statements about the “Deep State” and vowing to investigate the Biden administration for misdeeds that never occurred.

All of this gives the latest updated information about what happened in Carson County a bit more credibility.

 

local news

Slaton’s successor needs to be faithful

Northeast Texas voters will get a chance in November to elect someone to represent them in the Texas House of Representatives.

This isn’t your ordinary election, though. Whoever is chosen to represent House District 2 will succeed a man scorned and eventually expelled from the House for his sexual abuse of an underage staffer.

Former Rep. Brian Slaton of Royse City took office in 2021 after defeating Rep. Dan Flynn, who later died. Slaton distinguished himself mainly by being a fire-breathing, flame-throwing conservative intent on pushing the MAGA-style cultural agenda. Then he decided to consume alcohol with a 19-year-old female staffer in his Austin apartment and then have sex with her.

That disgusting episode caught the attention of ethics watchdogs in the Legislature. They examined the allegations, determined they were true, recommended expulsion and the House followed suit.

Republicans running in the deeply conservative district vow to “restore integrity” to the office. That isn’t a huge hill to climb. All they have to do, in my view, is behave professionally and avoid having sex with anyone other than their spouse. 

Ousted Rep. Bryan Slaton’s tarnished legacy looms over special election | The Texas Tribune

Slaton’s legacy, though, lives on in the support some of the candidates are getting from former Slaton allies. Be careful, folks.

I am one Texan who is glad Slaton is outta there. I talked twice with him while writing stories for KETR-FM and I found him to be obnoxious in his fealty to that MAGA agenda. The guy had nothing constructive to offer.

Let’s hope the next state representative can provide an actual vision for where he or she wants to take the region.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Judge is in charge … period!

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan today told the entire world just who is in charge of Donald J. Trump’s life.

For starters, it is not Donald J. Trump. That role now falls on a jurist who was selected randomly to preside over a trial involving charges that the former POTUS conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Chutkan reportedly doesn’t suffer fools at all, let alone lightly. She delivered a ruling today that is both fair and it tells the criminal defendant, Trump, that he needs to cease hiding behind a “free speech” argument in his defense. He is free to say the 2020 election was rigged, she said, but he is not free to issue veiled threats against the prosecutors, jurors or the judge.

Chutkan told Trump that free speech is not “absolute” and that criminal defendants — such as Trump — have limits on statements they can make.

Thus, we have just received a sterling civic lesson on how an individual who prides himself on being “in charge” of all he sees, who once boasted that “I, alone” can fix the nation’s ailments, is now beholden to a federal judge.

Therein lies the wisdom of the founders who created a federal judiciary that has the authority to keep anyone — even a former president — on a short rhetorical leash.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news

Conviction = condemnation

One almost can predict with metaphysical certitude what will happen if a federal jury convicts Donald J. Trump on any of the charges being brought before them.

The MAGA mob of morons will condemn the jury. It will blast the presiding judge to smithereens. It will cast doubt on the integrity of the federal judiciary. It will demonize the Justice Department, starting with the attorney general and the special counsel.

None of will — or at least it shouldn’t — have any material effect on the outcome. We still would have a former POTUS standing as a convicted felon facing years in prison.

I won’t wager which of the charges holds the most potential for conviction. My opinion on all of that changes with the direction of the wind.

Oh … and then we have the two state trials that Trump is likely to face. He’s got the one in New York City and quite likely one in Fulton County, Ga. Both of those prosecutions are being led by Black district attorneys, which of course feeds into Trump’s racist wheelhouse. We damn sure can look forward to hearing Trump bloviate on the racial component of those actions.

Now, of course none of this will matter if he’s acquitted, if he walks away cleanly, if the feds and the states cannot persuade juries to convict beyond a reasonable doubt of Trump’s guilt in his effort to steal the 2020 presidential election and of his hiding of classified documents taken from the White House. Then we have the hush money payment he made illegally to the adult film star to keep her quiet about a tryst the two of them had … but which Trump denies ever occurred.

We are heading for a major storm. Let’s all hold on.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Ronnie, we hardly knew ye

Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign appears to be imploding. Dude can’t get traction in a Republican Party dominated by the MAGA morons dedicated to the demagoguery fomented by Donald J. Trump.

DeSantis seeks to out-Trump Trump, but only the one-time POTUS and carnival barker is able to deliver the message … whatever the hell it is to his cult followers.

The Florida governor has dismissed his campaign adviser; he remains a distant second in all the GOP primary polls in key early voting states.

Trump, meanwhile, remains the prohibitive favorite among GOP primary voters despite being indicted thrice for felony crimes, with a fourth one on the way and despite spending campaign cash to pay off his legal bills. Think about this, too, for just a moment: A presidential candidate with his own Boeing 757 jetliner to fly him from place to place needs to dip into his contributors’ cash to pay legal fees? What in the hell is wrong with that picture?

Oh well. Let ’em stew in the GOP.

Looks like the GOP is going to nominate — yet again — an individual who simply is unfit for public office.

Isn’t this just a blast?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

County calls out TxDOT

Texas transportation planners apparently believe that what they giveth they can taketh away without being challenged.

Not so fast, according to Collin County’s Commissioners Court.

Commissioners have sent the Texas Transportation Commission a letter requesting the state return $490 million it had set aside for highway improvements that run through the heart of one of Texas’s fastest-growing counties.

Full disclosure: I live in the area affected by this still-growing dispute between the county and the state.

The letter references work planned for U.S. Highway 380 and Texas Spur 399 in McKinney. The 380 project includes a freeway bypass that TxDOT is considering for Princeton, as well as several other communities within the Collin County boundary. TxDOT wants to divert the money for high-occupancy vehicle lanes in Harris County.

Collin County commissioners are having none of it. Nor should they.

TxDOT has gone through a number of public hearings, taking hours upon hours of public comment on the impact of the highway improvements planned for cities such as Princeton, Farmersville, McKinney, Prosper, and Little Elm.

Now it wants to yank a sizable portion of the money it had set aside for that work to build HOV lanes in Houston?

I want to stand with Collin County’s Commissioners Court on this matter. I likely won’t live long enough to see the completion of the massive project being planned for Highway 380, but I damn sure want the state to listen to this elected governing board, which has stated in unambiguous language that it wants the money restored.

“Mobility is part of what drives the strong economic engine of North Texas and specifically Collin County,” commissioners wrote to the Transportation Commission. “A delay on such critical projects can have an impact on state revenues” and would have a negative impact on air pollution associated with traffic congestion in the region, they wrote.

Those of us who live here and who have to tolerate the stand-still traffic patterns along Highway 380 shouldn’t tolerate this takeaway of public money.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

OK, I am ‘woke’

I am so busted. The meme you see here helps describe the individuals who are being demonized by politicians and their sycophants on the far right.

They detest “woke” policies. It has taken me some time to grasp fully what the term even means. I still am not entirely comfortable tossing it around so casually the way, for instance, that GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is able to do.

He said he intends to “rid the nation” of woke policies. And turn it into what? A nation of intolerant a**holes? Are we going to be so closed-minded that we cannot stand to hear opposing points of view?

I won’t stand for a nation that becomes a one-think state.

Thus, I do stand as someone who is proudly “woke.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news

How does he get elected?

One of the key questions I have difficulty answering involves the junior U.S. senator from Texas … Raphael Edward Cruz.

Friends from all over the country keep asking me: How does this guy keep getting elected? 

I presume they’re asking in good faith, given his outspoken and often outlandish statements. My short answer, though, is: I just don’t know.

The Cruz Missile, a Republican, has been elected twice to the U.S. Senate. In his dozen or so years in the body, I cannot point to a single significant piece of legislation with his name on it. I can, however, look at many instances of grandstanding, of preening, of demagoguery, of sucking up and — of course — of public affairs disasters.

My all-time favorite Cruz blunder involves that ill-fated trip he took to Cancun, Mexico during the February 2021 killer freeze that took the lives of hundreds of Texans. He sought to take his family to the sunny beaches of the Mexican Riviera … until he was caught. Then he scurried back and then blamed his daughter for talking him into taking the trip in the first place.

Cruz is a doofus of the first order … albeit a well-educated buffoon.

He ran for POTUS in 2016, calling Donald Trump a sniveling coward. Then he lost and became Trump’s most ardent ally in the Senate. He was right the first time!

He almost lost his Senate seat in 2018 to the young upstart, Beto O’Rourke.

Now he’s up again for re-election. Two Democrats are vying for the chance to knock this clown off his stool in 2024. I like them both: Congressman Colin Allred of Dallas and state Sen. Roland Guiterrez of San Antonio. Indeed, I keep reading analysis that suggests that Cruz might be among the most likely GOP senators to be shown the door next year, which would — to my way of thinking — be so very sweet.

Cruz, by many accounts, is universally detested in the Senate. He cannot craft legislation. However, he can bloviate with the best of ’em. Which might explain how he keeps getting elected. Although I have difficulty believing Texans actually prefer pomposity over positivity. 

Here’s hoping — one more time — for an electoral result that will put a smile on my face.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, media news

The ‘O’ is vanishing

2 Comments

We called it “The O,” or the “Big O” back in the day, but these days the “O” is a shadow of its former self and is vanishing into history’s dust bin.

The O is The Oregonian, the newspaper of record for my hometown of Portland. A friend sent me a story from Editor & Publisher with a distressing story about the Oregonian’s plans to quit daily distribution of a newspaper that once was considered a “cash cow” for Newhouse Corp., the company’s corporate owner. The Oregonian is about to end 142 years of daily newspaper distribution.

No more, man.

A paper that once distributed more than 250,000 copies daily and 400,000 copies on Sunday is suspending publication for four days weekly effective Jan. 1. The culprit? That damn Internet!

I don’t know how to react, other than with profound sadness at the state of the industry that gave me a wonderful career. I practiced my craft for nearly 37 years, and I actually got started with the Oregonian Publishing Co., which used to operate the afternoon Oregon Journal until it folded the paper into The Oregonian in 1982. I worked on the copy desk at the Journal until the spring of 1977 when I took a job as a temporary sportswriter for the Oregon City Enterprise-Courier.

The temp job became permanent, and I was on my way to a career that gave me more enjoyment and fulfillment than I probably deserved.

Now comes this terrible news out of my hometown. The Eugene Register-Guard and the Salem Statesman-Journal — both owned by Gannett/GateHouse — have effectively become a regional newspaper covering the Willamette Valley, according to E&P. The Medford Mail-Tribune shut down earlier this year. All three of those publications once were award winners of the first order..

The Oregonian’s circulation numbers are about a tenth of what they once were. The paper’s sales continue to plummet. What’s next is the unthinkable: shutting it down altogether.

Wow!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news

All this legal trouble makes me dizzy

Allow me this admission … which is that I am having a bit of difficulty keeping straight all the legal battles awaiting the immediate past president of the United States.

He has three indictments sitting in front of him: two from the federal government he once pledged to protect and another from a New York district attorney.

A fourth indictment from the Fulton County (Ga.) DA appears imminent. They all appear to be serious to the max. If he gets convicted on all the charges, Donald J. Trump could spend the rest of his life in prison. Given his advanced age, it well might be that even a partial conviction could imprison Trump for the duration.

What is most astonishing as I watch this drama unfold is witnessing how Trump no longer is in control of his own future; control rests with three judges who are presiding over the various trials awaiting the former POTUS.

One of them, U.S. District Judge Tanya  Chutkan is the most interesting. She is an immigrant from Jamaica appointed to the federal bench by President Obama. Thus, she presents a challenge to Trump; she hails from a “sh**hole country,” as Trump once said and she owes her lifetime job to a man Trump despises. Trump is likely to anger her beyond all measure before this case gets resolved.

Special counsel Jack Smith wants the indictment he obtained regarding the 1/6 assault on our government to be tried quickly. Judge Chutkan holds the key to that matter.

Well, I am sitting out here in the peanut gallery watching and waiting with a good bit of anticipation on what could happen to the most unfit man ever elected to the presidency. I’ll just have to keep my mind clear to stay caught up with what appears to be a whirl of activity for the rest of the current year and into the next one.

I will have to hold on with both hands.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com