Monthly Archives: November 2023

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Timing is everything

One of the tricks I learned quickly upon moving from Amarillo to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex is how to navigate smoothly along this region’s massive highway network.

I’m sure you’ve heard about the traffic in this part of the world. Dallas’s traffic jams have become legendary … and Fort Worth is no picnic either.

Rule No. 1: Never attempt to get anywhere during “rush hour,” morning or afternoon. You wait patiently to schedule your sojourns when you expect everyone out there to be either at work in the morning or at home in the evening.

Rule No. 2: Find back roads that could get you there nearly as quickly as the freeways/turnpikes/parkways/toll roads. That’s problematic, given that others might already have discovered those back roads, rendering them next to impossible to navigate.

I drove today from Collin County all the way to southwest Tarrant County. I left after the morning rush and returned prior to the evening rush. The drive is about 60 miles in length, taking me a little more than an hour to complete.

I did so in both directions with little fuss and even fewer four-letter words muttered under my breath at the traffic jams. What’s more, when you live in West Texas for as long as my wife and I did — 23 years — you learn that to get anywhere, you just have to drive a good bit to get there.

None of this accounts for the possibility of an 18-wheeler overturning and spilling toxic substances all over creation.

Just wanted to share this learning experience with you. I realize it’s no great discovery on my part, but it sure allows me to go from Point A to Point B and back again without undue stress.

national news, political news

So long, Rep. Santos

George Santos will go down in history as the first — but probably far from the last — piss ant member of Congress to bring shame to the body before ever taking office.

The New York Republican announced this week he won’t seek re-election to the district he won by lying his way throughout the 2022 campaign. He also allegedly stole money from his campaign fund and used it for personal pleasure.

The House Ethics Committee has issued a blistering report condemning Santos and its chairman, a Republican who voted against impeaching Donald Trump and in favor of overturning the 2020 presidential election result, now vows to file a resolution calling for Santos’s expulsion from the House.

Santos has taken lying to stratospheric levels. It’s unbelievable that he hasn’t been sanctioned long before now. But … it’s about to happen.

Santos says he won’t run for re-election. Big … effing … deal!

As for shaming the body? Well, it was full of shame long before Santos set foot in the House chamber.

Good riddance … George!

legal news, national news

SCOTUS takes tiny step

The U.S. Supreme Court is 234 years of age and only until this week it has operated without a single standard for the way its justices should conduct themselves.

The court finally has adopted a sort of guideline for the things its justices can do, but it falls far short of anything worth a damn or any measure that could help restore public confidence in our nation’s highest court.

Two justices have been in the news of late. Clarence Thomas — the court’s senior member in terms of service — has received lavish gifts from a Dallas billionaire while also ruling on cases involving the Harlan Crow’s business interests. The gifts include vacations for Thomas and his wife, tuition paid for his grandson, and a mortgage paid for a home occupied by Thomas’s mother.

Samuel Alito took a fishing trip at the expense of a hedge fund manager and then failed to recuse himself in a case involving the fund.

Oh, we also have the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg taking a trip to Israel paid for by someone with a case pending before the court.

This is utter nonsense. It’s pure crap. It compromises the court’s integrity, its fairness, its objectivity, its ability to rule on the merits of a case exclusively without being influenced by outside pressure.

I have been yammering all along that Clarence Thomas should resign from the court, but that call involves the numerous instances of conflict of interest that seem to fly over the justice’s head; the others involve his wife’s involvement in the Big Lie and the assault by MAGA morons on 1/6 seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The very first rule of ethics should be for justices to avoid any possible conflict of interest by being involved in any fashion with litigants appearing before them. The Supreme Court has stated it now in writing.

What’s missing, though, is any meaningful enforcement of the rules. The court has laid out nothing that prescribes a punishment for justices who are caught violating these rules.

That absolutely must be the next step.

national news, national security, political news

‘Weaponized’ DOJ? Hah!

How in the name of legitimate political discourse does the MAGA wing of the Republican Party justify accusing Joe Biden of “weaponizing” the Department of Justice?

Why pose the question? Because the MAGA minions’ main man, Donald Trump, took weaponization to a new level … and pledges out loud and with crystal clarity that he plans to do even more of it were he allowed to return to the White House!

Trump said he intends to rid the nation of the “vermin” he says occupy key offices in D.C. Think about the use of that particular term for just a moment. Does it ring a bell? It should. It’s the same kind of language Adolf Hitler used when talking about his desire to rid the world of Jewish people.

How would Trump accomplish that moronic notion? By deploying federal agents. In other words, by weaponizing the Justice Department.

The MAGA morons are lining up behind the idiotic rants of a disgraced, twice-impeached, multiple-times indicted former POTUS who stands at this moment of being a convicted felon by the time the GOP presidential nominating convention kicks off next summer.

We are witnessing in real time, ladies and gents, the dumbing down of a voting population that calls itself “patriotic” when, in reality, they are the exact opposite; No patriot would dare endorse the notion of siccing federal government agents on Americans whose only “crime” is to disagree with politicians who crave power.

But … listen carefully to the rants that pour of out of Trump’s pie hole and you hear a fraudulent pol pledge to toss democratic principles into the crapper.

He pledges to turn the Justice Department into a weapon he can use to punish anyone who dares challenge the idiocy that is bound to become this individual’s benchmark.

He must not be allowed anywhere near the White House.

Sports news, State news

What a way to go!

Someone has to explain this one to me, because my sometimes-pointy head can’t quite grasp certain realities.

OK, Texas A&M University fired head football coach Jimbo Fisher over the weekend after the Aggies blew out Mississippi State by 40 points or so. That means that Fisher — for whatever reason — wasn’t doing the job the Aggies expected of him.

So, does the coach clear out his office and skulk away into the night like a scorned hound dog? Oh, no.

Dude gets tens of millions of dollars! The university is going to pay Fisher $75 million over the course of several years. The money, according to the Texas Tribune, will come from “donor dollars from the school’s 12th Man Foundation and athletic department funds.”

“The decision to part ways with Coach Fisher is the result of a thorough evaluation of the football program’s performance, and what’s in the best interest of the overall program and Texas A&M University,” the school said in a statement.

“The best interest of the overall program” obviously didn’t include Coach Fisher. Which meant he wasn’t doing the job!

What in the world am I missing here?

media news

Who’s the dumb bell?

Had to share this social media post that appeared on my Facebook page.

No need to explain. The Marine’s response to the dummy’s initial statement says it all.

It does point out, though, the danger of those who profess to be smarter than other human beings when they cannot write the appropriate words in their native language.

This one made me laugh.

entertainment news

A Christmas film? You bet!

I will be brief with this blog post, in that I want to deliver a simple, straightforward message.

“Die Hard,” the first in a series of films, should be considered a Christmas movie. It’s a Christmas movie, man! Period!

Bruce Willis portrays Detective John McClane, whose wife, Holly — portrayed by Bonnie Bedalia — is attending a Christmas party. Terrorists led by Hans Gruber — portrayed by the late Alan Rickman — take the partiers captive.

McClane fights like the dickens to free them. There are Christmas references sprinkled throughout the film. McClane is successful, Gruber falls 30 stories to his death.

And everyone is able to enjoy Christmas.

I feel better already just making this proclamation.

Yippee-kai-yay … !

national news, political news

Girding already for … the grind

Make no mistake about this undeniable fact: The next presidential election is likely to drive me to the loony bin.

The Republican Party’s presidential primary field is winnowing down already. Tim Scott is out. So is Mike Pence. Others ought to take a powder as well. Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley got into a beef the other evening when Ramaswamy mentioned Haley’s daughter as a TikTok user, prompting Haley to call the loudmouth pretender “just scum.”

Meanwhile, President Biden is taking hits from within his Democratic Party over whether he ought to seek a second term. He is 80 years of age; the oldest man to occupy the presidency. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has abandoned the Democratic Party and is running for POTUS as an independent. Another guy has decided to run for the presidency too as a Democrat.

If I could manipulate the system, I would much rather see someone other than Donald Trump nominated by the GOP to run against the president. If it’s not meant to be, then we can kiss the Republican Party we’ve all known goodbye.

Trump doesn’t have a single policy principle he can tout as his own. He is pledging a scorched-Earth campaign to “eliminate” everyone who’s ever opposed him.

And … how in this ever-lovin’ world will Biden and Trump fare if we are forced to listen to them debate each other on the world stage? Do you remember the 2020 campaign, when Biden told the blathering Trump to “just shut up, man”?

I am going to offer a prayer to myself that I am able to keep my sanity as this campaign unfolds. While I’m at it, I’ll pray for anyone who’s having the same feelings of anxiety about the future of this great country. So much of that future is going to depend on whether Americans can reject the nonsense touted by the former POTUS.

Here’s hoping for the best.

local news

City needs visionary

A Princeton City Hall staffer who has become a source for this blogger has informed me that the City Council has yet to decide how it intends to look for a new city manager.

I am about to offer some unsolicited advice on how to find a successor to Derek Borg, who resigned suddenly the other evening after the council called an emergency meeting to discuss the city manager’s status.

My advice is simple: Go big, members of the council and hire a top-flight executive search firm to find a candidate who is able to lead the city along its explosive growth path. 

Princeton’s growth continues to astonish many of us who have moved here in recent years. My wife and I planted our roots in Princeton in early 2019. The city’s census figures released the following year showed it nearly tripled in growth from the 2010 population.

The very last thing Princeton needs to run its municipal government machinery is a placeholder, an individual who is just there to await his or her retirement. The city’s next manager should have a clear vision on what the city needs and a plan that can enable the city to find its way into the future.

Borg did an adequate job during his era as city manager. However, he wasn’t educated in municipal management. He is a firefighter, serving as the city fire marshal and then fire chief before ascending to the manager’s job.

The next Princeton city manager, as far as I am concerned, should be educated in the field of municipal growth management. He or she should have high energy and a relentless desire to seek fresh ideas, new approaches. The next manager also, in my view, ought to deliver a stated commitment to helping this city develop an identity.

Allow me this bit of candor: Princeton is a work in progress. It has no municipal identity. A new city manager shouldn’t have to concoct an identity, but he or she should be able to question those who have been here a long time about what makes Princeton such a desirable community to live.

It is quite obvious that many thousands of people are coming here to raise families, earn their living and presumably call this place “home.”

The next city manager ought to be able to provide a reason for them to stay and for the city to progress into the future with confidence.

local news, political news, State news

GOP regrets all that power?

A saying comes to mind when I consider the infighting and back-biting within the Texas Republican Party’s political hierarchy.

Be careful what you wish for …

Gromer Jeffers Jr., who covers politics for the Dallas Morning News, refers to the “scrum” that has developed between Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Both legislative chambers are at odds with each other over Gov. Greg Abbott’s No. 1 legislative priority: school vouchers.

Republicans who command a super majority in both chambers cannot bridge the chasm that separates the MAGA/Freedom Caucus crowd from the more “establishment” elements within the GOP.

This thought entered my sometimes thick skull this morning as I read Gromers’ piece in the DMN: Might it be time for Texas Democrats to re-emerge from their decades in the wilderness to become a political force in this state? Ponder this for a moment: It could serve Republicans well to have a strong opposition party with which it could do battle rather than wasting time squabbling among themselves.

Phelan and Patrick’s alliance flew off the rails when the House impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton. The impeachment vote was heavily bipartisan; it was overwhelming. Paxton’s subsequent acquittal in the Senate trial brought out Patrick’s scorn for the decision delivered by the House … and he stated his contempt for the House immediately after Paxton’s acquittal.

Both sides are digging in. House GOP members dislike much of the voucher notion, much to the chagrin of GOP senators. Phelan backs his House colleagues, while Patrick stands with the Senate.

How do Democrats parlay all of this into political advantage that suits them? I suppose they can beat the drum over governmental incompetence, noting that Republicans are so damn entrenched in their dislike for each other that they let key legislation slip away. Then again, a united Republican Party would do Democrats little good … correct?

I am just one Texas resident who has grown tired of the Legislature’s inaction. I favor good government over no government. Republicans who own most of the Legislature’s seats — along with every statewide elected office — have continued to demonstrate big-league incompetence.

Democrats might have a way out of the darkness, but only if they can cobble together an agenda that doesn’t draw heavy fire from the demagogic wing of the Republicans.