Monthly Archives: October 2023

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GOP set to lose House

I am going to venture gingerly out on the proverbial political limb to make an assertion about the future of the U.S. House.

It is that the Republicans’ razor-thin control of the lower legislative chamber is in serious danger of flipping back to Democratic control after the 2024 election.

Why is that? Because the Republican hierarchy that controls the House cannot function. It cannot elect a speaker after ousting the guy who once had the office. Failure to choose a speaker puts the shutdown of the federal government into even more jeopardy, meaning it is likely to occur.

Who will get the blame? The feckless Republican congressional leadership, that’s who! And they deserve it, too!

Rep. Jim Jordan, the unofficial chairman of the MAGA board in the House, will not be elected speaker, which is a good thing. The guy happens to be an election denier and an unindicted participant in the action on 1/6 spasm that threatened to overthrow the government.

The House does have an interim speaker, Patrick McHenry, who doesn’t want the job. To avoid the calamity of a government shutdown, the House might give McHenry some more power to at least get the legislative wheels turning to avoid the shutdown.

All of this sets up a potential rout in the 2024 congressional election. Democrats need to flip four seats to take back the House.

Bring it!

military news

Israel hits ‘too hard’?

This is a headline I didn’t want to read once war broke out between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas:

“Israeli airstrike kills 500 in hospital.”

The report came from the Gaza Health Ministry. So … it immediately becomes somewhat suspect. However, as we are learning all over again: War is hell.

Indeed, we might learn before this war ends that it is worse than hell. The “war is hell” comment, attributed originally to Union Army Gen. William “Tecumseh” Sherman during the Civil War, almost has become a cliche, a throwaway line.

It isn’t. It is the unvarnished, unadulterated truth about humanity’s ability to inflict misery on itself.

If the report is true that an Israeli airstrike hit a Gaza hospital and inflicted the kind of casualty count that is being reported, then much about this conflict might be changing. Israel said it intends to wipe Hamas “off the face of the Earth.” I, too, want Hamas destroyed. There cannot possibly be room in a civilized world for the scale of brutality that exists in what passes in the hearts of those who inflict it.

Hamas is among the worst of the worse.

However, Israel must be accountable for hitting a hospital in the manner that is being reported.

Israel denies hitting the hospital. “We did not strike that, and that the intelligence that we have suggests that it was a failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad, and I want to add, categorically, that we do not intentionally strike any sensitive facilities, any sensitive facilities, and definitely not hospitals,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN.

I am going to presume that Israel knows and understands the rules of modern warfare. One of those rules places hospitals off limits to attack. The penalty would be to charge the attackers as war criminals.

I also am going to insist that we cannot place Israel on the same plane as Hamas. Israel has pledged to avoid killing civilians as it plans a possible frontal ground invasion of Gaza. Hamas, though, targets civilians, as it did when it started this war more than a week ago with that horrific rocket barrage into Israel.

Israel, to my mind, deserves some benefit of the doubt as the probe into this attack proceeds … but, dammit! — this is a headline I clearly did not want to read.

 

local news, Sports news, State news

From ‘zero’ to ‘hero’

Let’s see now. At the end of the 2022 Major League Baseball season, Dallas/Fort Worth baseball fans were wondering if the Texas Rangers had lost their ability to compete at the big-league level.

The Rangers stunk. The were a laughingstock. They reminded longtime fans of some of the worst teams in American League history. Then came the offseason. They hired a new manager, Bruce Bochy, who brought in some new coaches. They went to work to rebuild the team.

Have they succeeded? Yeah. They have.

The Rangers so far — if you’ll pardon the baseball pun — are pitching a shutout in the 2023 playoffs. They went to Tampa to sweep the Rays. Then they went to Baltimore and took the first two from the Orioles and sent the Birds packing with a third victory at home.

Now the Rangers are playing the Houston Astros in the American League Championship series and have defeated the ‘Stros in the first two games. They have to win two more to advance to the World Series. Let’s see … that’s 7-0 so far in this playoff extravaganza.

Not a bad turnaround.

national news

House stops governing

It has gotten so bad in the U.S. House of Representatives …

How bad is it? you might ask.

Well, it is so bad that half of the legislative branch of government cannot even consider how to stop a pending fiscal calamity if the U.S. decides — once again — to shut down the federal government.

Ladies and gents, it’s the consequence of electing a cabal of fruitcakes, obstructionists and legislative thrill-seekers known as the MAGA caucus.

The House still has no speaker to run the show. I don’t know how it finds one, given the deep division with the GOP caucus that controls the legislative body by the slimmest of margins.

The MAGA goons ousted Kevin McCarthy from the speakership because he had the gall to work with Democrats on a temporary solution to keep the government functioning. Then they nominated Steve Scalise to be their nominee for speaker, but then Scalise — who counted the votes among House members — realized he couldn’t win the job, so he backed out.

That leaves House GOP members with Jim Jordan, the 1/6 conspiracist and 2020 presidential election denier, as the frontrunner for the task. He isn’t likely to win enough votes to be elected. How might he win enough votes? Hmm. Maybe he could make a concession or two to the moderates in the House caucus.

Oh, wait. That didn’t work for McCarthy.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the closing of the government.

Congress is broken.

local news

Just vote … dammit!

For far longer than I dare remember I have been using my journalistic platform to counsel voters to turn out in any election that gets thrown before them.

My main target are the stay-at-homers who decide that their vote in local elections doesn’t matter. So, they figure, why bother?

Sigh. Groan. Scream at the top of my lungs.

We’re going to vote on Nov. 7 in communities across North Texas. Princeton voters are going to elect members to their school district board of trustees as well as to their city council. What’s more, Princeton voters will be asked to fill two new council seats that the enactment of a home-rule charter requires of City Hall.

Exciting times, yes? Hah!

My hunch is that the Princeton turnout will be less than 10% of those who are registered to vote. As bad as that turnout could be, it dives even lower when you factor in those who could vote but don’t even bother to register to do so.

I’ve been covering local elections in Texas since the spring of 1984. Two municipal elections stand out as outliers to the usual trend of pitiful voter participation.

One of them occurred in 1984, when I first arrived in Beaumont. Voters there cast ballots on a measure to rename a major thoroughfare after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sixteen years after the great man’s murder and the city still hadn’t taken action to honor him for his noble work seeking justice for all Americans.

The measure failed, but by just a few votes. The turnout, though, far exceeded the norm, as it attracted more than 20% of the city’s registered voters. City leaders crowed about the turnout, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of their constituents still didn’t cast ballots on an issue that had produced a firestorm of debate and discussion.

FYI, the Beaumont council eventually did act and created a parkway in Dr. King’s honor.

My second example tracks the action taken by another Texas city to sell its publicly owned hospital to a private, for-profit health care provider. Amarillo voters in 1996 squabbled mightily over whether to sell Northwest Texas Hospital to Universal Health Care Inc.

That referendum passed and the turnout stood about 30% of registered voters. Once again, city leaders did their share of chest-thumping over a turnout that still told me that nearly seven out of 10 voters stayed home.

Turnouts vary from city to city. They generally run in these municipal elections at around 6 to 8%. And yet, these elections have far greater tangible impact on us than elections for president or Congress.

What the hell? I have said in every way possible that local voters either can make these decisions themselves or they can leave these decisions to their neighbors who might share a totally different view of how to run City Hall than they do.

Good government has a long way to go to become relevant at the local level.

national news

‘Speaker’ Jordan? Hah!

Jim Jordan is mining for votes among his U.S. House colleagues, who he wants to lead as the next speaker of the House.

To say he faces a major fight is to be guilty of gross understatement. Republicans nominated him to run for the speakership, but he got only 130-something votes. He needs 217 votes among House members to take the gavel. Where does he get them?

Jordan is a MAGA minion. He is a no-compromise hardliner. Democrats signing up? Hah! Establishment Republicans? Even more laughter!

The House Republican caucus is deeply divided. We have the MAGA clowns and those who oppose them. If Jordan were to broker a deal with Democrats, that would seem to doom any chance he has to win all the far-right votes he would need to take the gavel.

What’s more, and this is important, the very idea that a man who stood with Donald J. Trump on 1/6 and who has consistently cast aspersions on the results of the 2020 presidential election could then ascend to the third spot in presidential succession simply boggles my noggin.

Does Jim Jordan face a steep hill on his way to the speakership?

You bet he does … and he should.

State news

Regret seeps in

Occasionally I get a question from friends of mine who live far from Texas, where my family and I have called home for nearly 40 years.

“Do you regret moving there, given the politics of the state.”

I have been able to answer with a straight face, “No. I have made a nice living here as a journalist.  Besides, I don’t take my politics home with me at the end of the day.”

Some regret, though, is beginning to seep into my skull and into my heart. The source comes from the recent acquittal of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton by the Republican-controlled state Senate.

From my vantage point, it appeared to me the multiple charges leveled against Paxton looked credible. I had hoped the Senate would ratify the Texas House’s overwhelming impeachment of the AG. It didn’t. Senators acquitted Paxton on every one of the 16 counts for which he was put on trial.

I have concluded that in this state, Republican are ouster-proof, no matter the evidence that piles up against them. House impeachment trial managers presented testimony from former assistant AGs, from political pals of the individual who gained from his relationship with Paxton.

It went into the ears of senators and out the other side. Why? I guess because most of them are Republicans, just like the AG. They listened more to their partisan voices than to whether the AG disgraced his office, which is what the charges against him implied.

The GOP grip on the political machinery in this state is ironclad, yes? It is that partisan loyalty that resulted in Paxton’s acquittal.

The result disappointed me greatly, so much so that for the first time since 1984, when my wife and I moved here with our still-young sons, I cannot shake the pangs of regret.

International news

Complicated … but simple

My unabashed support for Israel as it prepares to defend itself Hamas is both complicated and simple.

I will start with the simple part. The Israeli Defense Force is charged with defending the nation against foreign enemies. Hamas presents an existential threat of the first magnitude. It launched its attack on Israel a week ago and the violence has killed many Palestinians and Israelis.

What does Israel do? It must defend itself against a well-armed, massive terrorist organization whose mission is to destroy Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared he intends to make Hamas realize it has made a “terrible mistake.”

The second simple element of my support for Israel is because of my many Israeli friends. I acquired these friendships during the monthlong visit to Israel in May-June 2009. I have stayed in touch with many of them. I worry terribly that they might be victimized by the terrorists. Anyone with friends who live in these danger zones know of what I speak.

The complicated part? It deals with Netanyahu and the hardline policies his Likud party policies. I am not a fan of Netanyahu and his view that the Palestinians share some of the guilt for the crimes delivered by the terrorists. Likud refuses to grant Palestinians all the benefits of citizenship.

Is there any justification for Hamas acting as it did with its massive rocket attack against Israel? No. Then again, the Israelis could have ameliorated the concerns of the Palestinians by backing off on the hardline policies it has enacted against the Palestinians. Israel’s hard line seems to have given Hanas some form of perverted justification for acting as it did.

The Israelis’ response to this attack is likely to be bloody beyond measure. There is no way on God’s good Earth that the counterattack will be free of collateral damage. That’s largely because the cowardly Hamas strategy is to hide among the women and children who live in Gaza.

I must stand with the Israelis.

International news

How can Hamas gain support?

As I watch the images flashed from my TV screen and read accounts of what I am witnessing, I am left to ponder the imponderable.

Which is … how can anyone with half a brain or a smidgen of a heart justify what Hamas has done in the name of “territorial integrity”?

Hamas’s assault on Israel is a week old now. Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians are dead. Many of the casualties, I hasten to add, are at the hands of the terrorists who launched the attack on Israeli civilians. And many of them are babies and old people.

Hamas doesn’t like the way Israel has treated Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. Maybe the complaint is legit. However, the terrorists’ action against that policy is beyond anything I can imagine as being reasonable.

Thus, I stand with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that the military objective now is to destroy Hamas, to “wipe it off the face of the Earth.”

This will be a bloody effort, to be sure. The Israelis, who’ve been threatened since the creation of the nation in 1948, have no choice but to act.

International news

Halt the sideshows!

Sideshows can be found even in the deepest of international crises … such as what we’re witnessing now as Israel goes to war with a dreaded international terrorist organization.

Far from the field of battle, congressional Republicans are looking to blame individuals within the Democratic administration for the intelligence failures that produced the stunning surprise when Hamas opened fire on Israel.  U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., has called for the immediate resignation of national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who she said misled Americans about the threat posed by Hamas.

It’s another political sideshow.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formed a “unity government’ with his political foes with whom he will work to quell this assault on Israeli citizens by Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip.

It’s going to get even bloodier and more tragic, we all fear, as Israel prepares a massive counterattack to, in Netanyahu’s words, “wipe Hamas off the face of the Earth.”

Let’s put a hold on the sideshow, shall we, while Israel prepares to defend itself against a terrorist organization that says its No. 1 mission is to destroy our nation’s most dependable ally in the Middle East.