Monthly Archives: July 2024

national news

VP list narrows rapidly

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Politics at the presidential level can be ruthless, brutal and unforgiving.

Kamala Harris is in the midst of a search for someone who will agree to run with her as vice presidential nominee in this year’s race for the White House. The vice president reportedly favored Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, given his standing as a champion for gun reform and his staunch views on border security and immigration overhaul.

Suddenly, though, other factors seem to have nudged Kelly off the top of the VP ladder. The new favorite appears to be Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

The overarching issue might have everything to do with whether Arizona can elect a Democrat to replace Kelly in the Senate, where Democrats hold a narrow edge over Republicans.

As for Shapiro, he’s a first-term governor in a state that is now tilting toward Harris in her fight against Donald Trump.

I do know this: The Democrats have a much deeper bench from which to make this choice than the Republicans. To that end, it is good that Vice President Harris is taking as much of the limited time she has available to her in making this most critical decision.

business news, local news

When to demolish?

I keep waiting, and waiting …. and waiting for the bulldozers to show up on a site I’ve been commenting on for some time.

It’s the apartment complex that someone started to build only to leave it undone more than a year ago. Since then, it has gone to serious seed, as in it’s getting unfit to finish.

It’s the one next to Wal-Mart on U.S. Highway 380 here in little ol’ Princeton, Texas. The developer and the general contractor parted company more than a year ago. The reasons for the snit aren’t known. The city seems to have decided the site isn’t up to code. It will issue the order to take it down in due course.

I might be sounding a bit repetitive with this post, but I want to make another point that I deem necessary to be made.

The city should never have to be put in a position such as the one that Princeton finds itself. City Hall is going to turn into the bad guy the moment it orders the bulldozers fired up. What appears to have happened is that the terms of the deal that brought this massive luxury apartment complex into being was not nailed down sufficiently to prevent the kind of kerfuffle that severed ties between the contactor and developer.

I cannot speak with direct knowledge of what should have been done, but I do know that Princeton, Texas, is now looking foolish — and unnecessarily so — because a partially built residential complex likely is doomed for destruction.

This is strange in the extreme.

national news

Be on guard, Democrats

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A certain level of smugness appears to be creeping into coverage of the 2024 presidential campaign.

Just as Republicans were feeling all gooey about Donald Trump’s chances against President Biden, the tide has turned significantly in favor of Kamala Harris, who succeeded Biden as the Democrats’ frontrunner for the party nomination.

A word to the wise: Republican campaign hatchet men (and women) have turned “negative campaigning” into an art form. The most recent incarnation of it goes back to around 1988. I got to cover that campaign while working in Beaumont, Texas, at the Beaumont Enterprise.

You remember it, right? Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis was riding high on a 17 percentage point lead over Vice President Bush. He came out of his party’s Atlanta convention ready to rock ‘n roll once he got into the White House. Then the attacks came from Bush and his team. Dukakis was deemed soft on crime because he opposed the death penalty; he granted a furlough to a killer who, while on that furlough, committed another violent crime.

Let’s not forget that disastrous “photo op” of Dukakis in the tank.

The Democrat’s lead shrank to zero, then Bush won the election in a landslide over Dukakis.

I’m just sayin’, Democrats … do not get smug over Kamala Harris’s remarkable rollout of her campaign.

national news, political news

Let’s get busy, Mme. VPOTUS

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Vice presidents rarely, if ever, can run on the accomplishments achieved by the presidents whom they serve.

Thus, it becomes imperative that Vice President Kamala Harris build a program for the future as she prepares to be nominated for president by the Democratic Party.

Harris and her team have conducted a flawless, seamless, perfect transition from VP running mate to becoming the top half of a presidential ticket. It happened, quite literally, overnight … when President Biden ended his re-election campaign and handed the party banner to his governmental partner.

Another truism is that campaigns always are about the future, not the past. While the GOP nominee Donald Trump keeps trying to relitigate The Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, Harris should look forward and tell Americans what they need to hear.

President Biden talks about making rich Americans pay their fair share of taxes; VP Harris needs to remind us all that the uber rich won’t end up in the poor house if they have to carry their share of the tax burden. Will the VP carry forth Biden’s infrastructure package, his climate change initiative, his efforts to reduce inflation, his superb job creation efforts?

We shouldn’t be consumed about complaints that have no basis in fact. We should look ahead to the future that, from my vantage point, looks pretty bright.

Mme. Vice President, it is time to get busy.

national news

Campaign suddenly sizzles

When was the last time a presidential campaign thought to be mired in moribund monotony has sprung to life literally overnight with the emergence of a new candidate?

Do you give up? No worries. I can’t think of an earlier time, either.

President Biden, the former oldest man to seek the presidency, surrendered his re-election campaign. He anointed Vice President Kamala Harris as his heir apparent … and then it hit the fan!

Harris raised $120 million in a single day. She has scarfed up thousands of endorsements, not to mention enough delegates to secure her nomination as the Democratic Party nominee next month.

Young voters tell pollsters they are excited again. So are women who are still furious over the Supreme Court decision that ended the right to an abortion.

VP Harris, meanwhile, is beginning to hone her attack rhetoric against Donald Trump, reminding voters that as a career prosecutor, she has taken on sexual assailants, crooks and frauds. “I know Donald Trump’s type,” she tells campaign rallies.

It has been a remarkable, not to mention rapid, acceleration of Democratic enthusiasm for the top of their party’s presidential ticket. The party was worried about whether its presumptive nominee has the wattage to stay in the race.

He vows to stay the course. Then … he declares that his reverence for the office he is “honored” to serve is eclipsed only by his “love of country.” The time has come, Joe Biden said, to hand the reins to a younger group of leaders.

Thus, a new campaign was given life instantly by a simple act of patriotism.

May the new frontrunner maintain her high energy for the next 100 days. This blogger looks forward to typing the words “President Kamala Harris.”

national news

Never have to vote? Seriously?

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Donald Trump’s penchant for verbal idiocy simply cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.

This next example is a hoot … and then some!

Trump told a group of Christian leaders that he intends to repair everything that is wrong with the country in four years (after being elected, of course) that there will be no need to have an election ever again! 

Not ever, he said. His audience, of course, applauded, which prompted Trump to say how he much he “loves” Christians and then inserted that “I am a Christian.” I won’t comment on his moronic need to tell the crowd that he’s one of them … except to say that he damn sure isn’t.

As for the “no more election” pledge, I am left to wonder: what in the name of democracy is this clown suggesting?

I believe it was at the 2016 Republican National nominating convention when Trump stood before the assembled delegates and pronounced that “I, alone” can repair what was wrong with the nation.

Well,, he couldn’t and he didn’t repair anything. He left office in January 2021 with the nation reeling from the COVID pandemic that killed nearly 1 million Americans, our worldwide alliances were in tatters and we were still trying to process the violent attack Trump provoked on Jan. 6 against the very government he took an oath to defend and protect.

Now this guy says he will repair the nation’s ills to a level that would make elections irrelevant, moot, unnecessary? What the hell … ?

How many more examples of this guy’s unfitness for public office will he throw at us before the MAGA cultists finally grasp what the rest of us know already?

business news, local news

Action — finally! — on business park

Well, you can just ruffle my hair and call me Frankie, for I have stumbled onto a project that has been a long time in the making.

I ran an errand this evening in Princeton, Texas, where I have lived for the past five years. My route took me south on Beauchamp Boulevard toward County Road 400. That’s when I saw a sign with the name of a general contractor just a few yards from a marker identifying the future site of Bois d’ Arc Professional Park.

What did I do? I took a picture of the sign and called the number of the contractor.  Then, expecting the call to go to voice mail, someone answered. It was Max Allen, the general contractor.

Allen then proceeded to tell me he is going to build a pre-school on the site. He said he expects to break ground “in about 60 days.” He said his work only entails the school but said there “might be other projects coming up as well.” I won’t take that last statement to the bank. Still, I am heartened to see some evidence of movement on a significant parcel of land that has just been growing weeds since I moved into the area all those years ago.

I have heard Mayor Brianna Chacon lament at least once that the professional park has remained empty. I will point out, though, that a new storage unit has gone up just south of professional park boundary. Chacon also has talked openly about the possibility of declaring a moratorium on single-family and apartment construction to enable the city to shore up its infrastructure.

With all that hanging over the city, I am tickled to reveal the apparent start of an important new commercial project on property that has been begging for it

Uncategorized

Harris needs to keep climbing

Kamala Harris, to state the obvious, has a huge mountain to climb as she campaigns for the presidency of the United States.

It is easy to fall into a public relations trap being laid by those who are enamored of the huge push the vice president has received since President Biden handed her the frontrunner’s torch the other day. Biden surrendered his re-election campaign, endorsed Harris to succeed him as the Democratic nominee and as POTUS. Thousands of other endorsements have poured in, giving Democrats a gigantic emotional boost as Harris prepares to accept her party nomination.

The mountain she must climb rests in the person of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. Trump continues to cling to a razor-thin polling lead, despite all the missteps, gaffes, the lies, the disjointed campaign blunders … you name, Trump has done it.

Yet — for the life of me — he remains strong politically. I am holding out the greatest hope I can muster that Trump will not hold up under the intense scrutiny that awaits him.

Let’s remember a key point. Trump and his MAGA cultists were fond of reminding us that Joe Biden, at 81 years of age, would be the oldest party nominee ever. Biden didn’t get that far. “The oldest ever nominee” tag now falls on Trump, who’s 78 years old and is showing every one of those years each time he takes the stump and flies off the rails with his nonsense.

I will encourage the vice president to never surrender as she continues to carry her message forward. She has energized millions of Americans just by agreeing to carry the Democrats’ banner into the next great political battle.

I happen to be just one newly engaged American patriot who wants to see her make history once more. All she has to do is win this election.

national news

DEI hire? Yeah … they all are!

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The rant we’re hearing now from Republican critics of Vice President Kamala Harris is that she was a “DEI hire” made by President Biden as a form of affirmative action.

What utter nonsense!

What does DEI stand for? Diversity, equity and inclusion. Right-wing educators want to rid public education of DEI references, contending that they are “woke policies” that need to be expunged from public education.

More trash!

Let us ponder vice presidential picks dating back to, oh, 1960. You will learn, as I have learned, that DEI has existed in that process for far longer than anyone case to remember.

John F. Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson to be vice president because LBJ would help the ticket do well in the South; LBJ also was a master legislator, whereas JFK had little experience. In 1968, Richard Nixon picked Spiro Agnew because Nixon thought he needed help luring the “ethnic voters” to his cause. In 1976, Jimmy Carter selected Walter Mondale to diversify the ticket geographically and because Mondale also had keen legislative instincts.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan tapped George H.W. Bush because of his deep foreign policy experience; Reagan had little of it. Bush then turned in 1988 to Dan Quayle to lure the younger voters of America. In 2000, George W. Bush needed foreign policy help, so he turned to Dick Cheney. In 2008, Barack Obama selected Joe Biden because Biden also had years of foreign policy experience that was lacking in the background of the young presidential hopeful.

Now we have Kamala Harris running for president. GOP critics are accusing her of being a DEI hire. Why? She’s the first Black American, and first American of South Asian descent to serve as VP. Every example I have cited in this blog post is symbolic of a DEI hire in one form or another.

This cheap-shot criticism is pure racist and sexist demagoguery in its most crass form.
national news

Kelly for VP

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Never have I stated my preference for whom a presidential nominee should choose as a running mate … until now, maybe.

I figure it’s a personal choice. I also know that it’s everyone’s business who gets the nod because when we cast our ballots, we do so for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Let us never forget that the VP is next in line to the top job in case the president cannot serve.

Vice President Harris has been thrust into the role of Democratic Party presidential frontrunner, courtesy of President Biden’s sudden withdrawal from his re-election campaign. Time is short. Harris must make her choice known no later than Aug. 7.

Chop, chop …. as they say.

So, who should she select? One name surfaced immediately after Joe Biden announced his decision to step down.

Arizona U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly.

Kelly has a been a Democratic star since taking office in 2023. He has disagreed with Biden administration border security policies. By and large, though, he’s been faithful to the party hierarchy.

Kelly is a former astronaut, having flown aboard shuttle missions until NASA grounded the fleet.

And no mention of Kelly can be done without noting that his wife, former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, was grievously wounded in a shooting that thrust her husband immediately into the world of becoming a household name as he rose to speak on his wife’s behalf.

I am grateful beyond measure that Giffords is still with us and has made tremendous progress in regaining her ability to communicate.

I shall be frank. Mark Kelly’s Arizona roots are critical, too. Kamala Harris will need that state if she is to be elected POTUS. Time is not her friend.