Tag Archives: MAGA

national news

Trump Cabinet coming together … for better or worse

Four down and a bunch more to go for Donald Trump as he seeks to assemble the latest version of the federal government’s executive branch.

As expected, it’s been some tough sledding for some of Trump’s picks to administer policy decisions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth needed a tie-breaking vote from Vice President J.D. Vance to push him across the finish line. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sailed through with a unanimous 99-0 Senate vote.

CIA Director John. Ratcliffe from North Texas and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also got confirmed; they both had their share of “no” votes.

What’s next presents the possibility of at least three serious donnybrooks. FBI Director nominee Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence hopeful Tulsi Gabbard and Health and Human Services pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

I almost don’t where to begin with these three nimrods. Patel wants to destroy the very agency he says he wants to lead; Gabbard has chummed around with deposed Syrian goon Hafaz al Assad; RFK Jr. might seek to endanger our children by getting rid of many vaccines now required.

All three of these individuals have serious opposition facing them. Patel has zero business running the FBI, given his expressed hatred of the agency. Gabbard is equally unfit to become DNI, as she has next to zero intelligence-gathering and analytical experience. RFK Jr. is half-cracked judging by his statements involving the care of our elderly and our children.

All three of those individuals need to be shown the door … with malice. It isn’t likely to happen because the GOP majority in the Senate is demonstrating it comprises a cabal of cowards who cannot bring themselves to demand that Trump find truly qualified public servants to fill these key posts.

Welcome to the return of government by chaos.

military news

DoD head appears cleared for job

Pete Hegseth should never be allowed to take the job he appears set to assume … secretary of defense of the world’s greatest military power.

But he will because I keep hearing how Senate Republicans, with a couple of notable exceptions, are standing with him. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska likely will vote against Hegseth. Two more GOP defections and the dude is toast.

Who might abandon this guy remains an open question. What we’ve all seen in the second coming of Donald Trump to the White House is that the GOP caucus is as scared of him as it was when he left office in 2021, having been defeated by Joe Biden.

To be honest, it makes me so angry I want to spit.

Let’s just set aside all the sexual abuse stuff, the womanizing, the marital infidelity for just a moment. Hegseth is a combat veteran. He served in the Army. Hey, so did I, so I’ll thank him for his service.

That’s it! He didn’t command large groups of men and women. He held no administrative job. He gravitated from the military to a gig on the Fox Propaganda Channel, serving as a weekend host on “Fox and Friends.”

This does not constitute any sort of experience that qualifies this guy to lead the nation’s — and the world’s — most powerful and lethan military organization.

Toss in the stuff about his alleged sexual misconduct — which comes from women who have identified themselves — and you have a recipe for unmiitigated disaster.

The dude has waffled, flipped and flopped on many of his more controversial views, such as whether women should serve in combat. He said “no,” now he’s backing away.

Donald Trump continues to boast about finding the “best people” to work with him as POTUS. Pete Hegseth isn’t possibly one of them.

national news

Newest MAGA moron steps up

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Step right up, Andy Ogles, and take your place as the latest MAGA moron to exhibit his colors as a blind loyalist to the MAGA man in chief, Donald Trump.

Ogles is a Tennessee Republican House member who has introduced a bill to allow Trump to run for a third presidential term when his current term runs out in January 2029. Ogles, of course, wants to rewrite the Constitution, which bans anyone from being elected president more than twice.

This is the product of a MAGA dipshit who believes Trump is the savior for a nation that, truth be told and heard, is in quite good shape. Ogles’ amendment would limit a third-term president to those who serve non-consecutive terms. That means, quite naturally, that former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are out, given that they were elected to two consecutive terms.

Let it be understood that the 22nd Amendment was crafted in the late 1940s by Republicans who didn’t want an “imperial presidency,” which they feared when Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt got elected to four terms. It has worked out all right since its ratification in 1951.

I am quite sure that when Trump’s current term is up that Americans will have decided they have had enough of the carnival barker masquerading as a serious politician.

As if one term wouldn’t have sufficed.

legal news

Birthright citizenship: solidly inscribed in Constitution

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Let’s just agree with this crystal clear notion … which is that the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution makes no distinction among those who are born in this country.

It is silent on whether parents are legal or illegal immigrants. You’re born here, you earn the right of citizenship. Period.

Donald Trump doesn’t see it that way. He wants to ban. He issued an executive order making that declaration. A federal judge, though, has declared Trump’s action in direct violation of the Constitution. Trump will appeal that sensible ruling. How far it goes is anyone’s guess. He’s got that right-wing-stacked Supreme Court on his side.

You must amend the Constitution to use the end of birthright citizenship to stem illegal immigration. There are serious hurdles to clear to amend the document.

The 14th Amendment also stipulates in crystal clear language that “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges … of citizens of the United States.”

Our forebears took care to ensure clarity of this amendment.

We must not trifle with birthright citizenship.

national news

Once more … what if?

What if a Category 4 or 5 hurricane were to slam the Texas coast, killing many people and destroying billions of dollars in property?

Or … what if a similar storm blasts Florida, causing that kiind of damage?

How about if an F-4 tornado swept across Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska, tearing apart valuable farm land?

Would the Republicans in Congress be so eager to attach strings to the damage the way are demanding of California in the wake of the wildfires that have destroyed thousands of homes, killing dozens of people? Of course not!

Why? Because those previous states are governed by Republicans, which tells me in the plainest language possible that the congressional GOP is politicizing aid to Americans that should be far above any political concerns.

The debate over whether we can afford aid to Americans who live in one of our United States simply makes me sick to my stomach.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Donald J. Trump should be ashamed of themselves. That is, if they have any shame left.

national news

Trump legitimizes treason!

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How does one process the action on the first day of his return to high office … other than to recognize that Donald J. Trump delivered on a campaign promise.\

Just after taking the oath as POTUS, Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 of the traitorous goons who stormed the nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election that Trump lost to President Biden.

It was arguably the darkest day in the history of our republic. Thousands of people stormed the Capitol that day, waging hand-to-hand combat with police officers seeking to protect members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence from the anger emanating from the assailants.

Americans never in our history had witnessed such a flagrant attack on the very system of government we say we cherish.

Well, Trump called the prisoners “hostages” and issued blanket pardons to them.

Utterly and completely disgusting and abhorrent to those of us who value the rule of law.

This American patriot — that would be me — am simply astonished at what transpired after the inauguration.

Donald Trump has just legitimized a clear and present act of treason against the government he swore to defend and protect.

I’ll have more to say on the other executive orders Trump issued, but first … I need to catch my breath.

national news

Custom gets flushed

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Customarily, presidential inaugural speeches are intended to appeal to Americans’ highest ideals, setting a tone for the incoming administration to follow.

But … as is always the case with POTUS No. 47, custom got flushed down the crapper today. Donald J. Trump took his oath of office and then launched into all the campaign talking points he used to win the election in November.

He didn’t bother to thank his predecessor, President Biden, for his five decades of public service, or to congratulate his 2024 opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, for the spirited campaign she waged against him.

Oh, no. None of that grace was to be heard in Trump’s speech. He railed yet again over what he called the decline of our nation, vowing to “make America great agaiin.”

It was vintage Trump. Frankly, it sickened me.

I decided to watch his speech hoping I might hear a word of grace from the man who violated the very oath he took in 2017. I hoped he might have learned a lesson or two from what I consider to be a failed presidency the first time around.

I was disappointed.

Just maybe, though, I shouldn’t have set my hopes too high.

media news

Awaiting Trump 2.0

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OK, I’ll have to be candid about the arrival of Donald Trump to the national political scene.

Your friendly blogger is going to seek to exercise some self-control when it comes to commenting on Trump as he assumes the presidency … yet again!

He no doubt is going to blather statements swathed in stupidity. He will display his ignorance of government time and again. He will insult his enemies, heap praise on his pals. My task as a blogger with a keen interest in politics and policy will be … to remain silent on most of that idiocy.

It sounds like a tall order. It has been easy for me to rant, rave and rail against the stupidity that flows from this guy’s pie hole. I have decided to follow a time-honored mantra: What the man does is more important than what he says.

I will just have to accept that he will say a lot of nonsensical things while sitting in the Oval Office. That’s just kinda par for this guy’s way of getting our attention.

When he acts on his idiocy, well, that’s another matter. His first day as a self-proclaimed “dictator” might give me ample grist on which to comment. I’ll be ready for that. Afterward? I intend to keep my powder dry for the things the numbskull in chief actually does.

Oh, it’s going to be a fun four years.

Uncategorized

Good call to move inaugural indoors, however …

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The decision to move the Monday presidential inaugural indoors is a good call for one obvious reason: it protects spectators and participants from the bitter cold expected to slam into the nation’s capital this weekend.

They’re going to open the Rotunda to the event that will feature Donald John Trump taking the oath of office for president. The Rotunda has a capacity of a couple hundred people. Which brings me to another, less obvious, issue related to the inaugural.

Moving the event indoors removes a discussion topic from the table: the size of the crowd gathered to witness it.

Or does it … ?

In 2017, Trump offered yet another obvious lie by saying his inaugural crowd set a record. Photographic evidence of the Mall crowd told a different story. The first Barack Obama presidential inaugural crowd in 2009 was far larger; for that matter, the second Obama inaugural in 2013 drew a larger crowd than Trump’s. Yet, Trump was having none of it.

Why is this important for today? I am waiting for ways that Trump will spin the interest in his inaugural crowd into something that won’t exist. I am all but certain he and his PR team will find a way to suggest that the “waiting list” for tickets to related inaugural events will soar into the millions of Americans.

Of course, none of this matters in the grand scheme of events. It will matter only if Trump and his team make a big deal out of it. I expect them fully to fixate on the trivial … which is what the narcissist in chief would require them to do.

Donald Trump, national news

How did we regress this far?

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I will go to my grave never understanding how this nation has regressed as far as it has with the election of someone who is so fundamentally flawed as the man who is about to become the 47th president of the United States of America.

I can recall an earlier era in this nation when Republicans across the land were so livid at the election of a young governor from Arkansas. Bill Clinton was believed to be a serial cheater, a womanizer who violated the oath he took to his wife. They published defamatory videos about him, accusing Bill and Hillary Clinton of killing a trusted aide who, in fact, took his own life.

Bill Clinton got elected president in 1992, but the hunt for impeachable dirt on him never let up. Finally, during a probe into a real estate matter, a special prosecutor found evidence of a relationship that existed between the president and a young White House intern. The prosecutor summoned a grand jury, which then asked the president about the affair. Clinton had taken the oath to tell the truth and then lied to the grand jury.

Aha! Republicans then had their impeachable offense: perjury before a duly sworn grand jury!

Good grief. Clinton lied about an affair and got impeached for it. He would be acquitted in a Senate trial.

Two decades later, we have a man in the White House who has admitted to marital infidelity but then sought political favors from a foreign head of state and then, after losing the 2020 election, incited an insurrection against the government as Congress was preparing to certify his election loss to Joe Biden. He went through two impeachment trials … but survived them both.

Republicans shrugged. No problem with any of that. He was convicted of 34 crimes involving the payment of money to a porn actress to be quiet about a tumble the two of them took in 2006.

We have entered a dark era where character no longer matters. We used to seek the very best among us to lead us. We have turned instead to giving a pass to someone who embodies he worst among us.

I never can accept what we are about to experience once again.