Tag Archives: MAGA

local news

Texas GOP sounds battle cry

These are difficult times if you are a Republican speaker of a House of Representatives, whether on a state level — such as Texas s — or on the national level in D.C.

Kevin McCarthy was tossed out of his speaker’s chair in Washington by an angry MAGA moron — Rep. Matt Gaetz — who filed a motion to declare the speaker’s chair “vacant.” McCarthy made the deal with the MAGA cult … and it cost him!

Next up will be Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, who is set to open the House proceedings in the third special session called this year by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Except that Phelan is in trouble with his own caucus, too. He led a House of Reps that impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. It turned out that the “will of the House” had its say. Then the Texas Senate acquitted Paxton on all the complaints filed against him.

There’s a move afoot in Austin to boot Phelan out of the speaker’s chair. Conservative lawmakers don’t like the way the speaker handled the impeachment of Paxton. They want his head on a platter.

It looks as though, to my eyes, that the Republican Party simply is too damn dysfunctional just to govern. Why is that? Because too many of the mainstream GOPers are afraid of retaliation by the MAGA cult.

Shameful, man.

education news

Support public education … not deplete it!

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called the Legislature back to work for its third special session this year, aiming to enact a law that allows Texans to divert their property taxes into private school systems.

Gov. Abbott can count me out!

I happen to want the Legislature to put more money into public education, not deplete its revenue stream by allowing Texans to purchase vouchers to spend on their kids’ education.

I am willing to concede that public education in Texas isn’t doing all it can do to provide our children with the best education possible. I see the test results and I am acutely aware that Texas students’ perform below the national averages on almost all educational disciplines. Much of that is cultural, some of it is economic.

It’s also because Texas public educators likely do not believe they have the support of the men and women in power who have it within their power to give teachers and administrators all the support they deserve.

Dammit to hell, anyway! Texas public education deserves better than it is getting from the state and, in some instances, from local school boards whose members have been bitten by the “anti-woke” bug. Public educators have found themselves distracted by pressure to ban books or to teach students only a “certain way” that adheres to some right-wing ideology.

I hate the notion of public education being kicked around like the proverbial political football. That is what is happening with the governor and legislators getting set to fast-track Texans away from public education.

As a believer in spending public money on public education, my sincere hope is that we can do more within government to improve the education we provide our children.

education news, local news

Institute shouldn’t ignore diversity

Alex and Cheryl Fairly are paying it forward in a big way at the university from which they both graduated.

The Fairlys are contributing $20 million to West Texas A&M University, creating an institute they say will promote West Texas values.

“The mission of The Hill Institute is to encourage reflection upon the importance of ten West Texas, Texas, and American values and, through study and scholarship, promulgate the values among students within the diverse disciplines of the University and the extended community,” according to a flier distributed by WT.  The institute is named after Joseph Hill, the second president of WT.

I hope they’ll allow this word of caution about the way of life the institute hopes to promote. Do not neglect or give short shrift to the immense diversity that is occurring throughout West Texas. I refer to ethnic, religious and racial diversity among the population that is growing throughout Amarillo and, indeed, in many of the surrounding communities.

The gift is the largest ever given to WT and for their generosity, the Fairlys deserve high praise.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick attended the announcement ceremony of the Fairlys’ gift. He said, according to the Texas Tribune, “This is the America that all America used to be, it should be again,” Patrick said of the sprawling, pastoral region whose rural counties and smaller outposts have long been a Republican stronghold. “These are American values here.”

West Texas A&M gets $20 million gift for new institute | The Texas Tribune

Let’s understand, though, that the Panhandle is now home to an increasing number of non-Anglo, non-Christian families. Let’s not deny them their place in the shaping of the Panhandle’s future. Nor let us not forget that even the Texas Panhandle is drifting toward a more “urban” society than it has known.

These changes are inevitable and likely cannot be reversed.

national news

MAGA mugs McCarthy

Kevin McCarthy’s tenure as speaker of the U.S. House came crashing down this week, a brief but still eventful stint as the Man of the House.

It appears that the California Republican will be remembered for brokering a deal that had the twin effect of ensuring his election as speaker and guaranteeing his demise the first time he broke faith with the folks with whom he brokered the deal.

It also appears that McCarthy will go down in the annals of U.S. political history as the worst negotiator ever to ascend to the post that put him third in line to the U.S. presidency. Wow! Stunning, man.

In one sense, McCarthy’s post-expulsion statement makes sense, that a tiny clique of right-wing extremists changed the course of legislative history. These extremists, the MAGA cult, have little support outside the halls of the House, he said. Yet they won the day.

Am I crying over that? No! He brought it all on himself by chipping away at his authority in order to get elected. It took him 15 ballots to win the speakership at the beginning of the year. He got his wish, then lived to regret forging a deal with the legislative devil.

One of the conditions of his being elected speaker was to enable a single House member to call for the “vacating of the chair” if the speaker didn’t do the bidding of the MAGA cult. McCarthy didn’t do the MAGA bidding. His sin was that he teamed with House Democrats to avoid a shutdown of the government.

Big …. deal! The plan he negotiated keeps the lights on for 45 days. Then we’ll face the same crisis all over again. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. We can thank the former speaker for a return to the madness.

Yeah, this guy got precisely what he deserved to get. A boot in the ass from the MAGA cult that is even less trustworthy than those within the Republican Party who hates them and the Democrats on other side of the House chamber.

This is no way to govern.

Donald Trump

Mind-boggling revisiting of issues

It simply boggles my noggin that the media have begun revisiting the issues that turned so many Americans off about Donald Trump when he ran for POTUS the first time.

Take his utter disdain for those who served this nation in uniform, who went to war to defend Americans, who were captured by the enemy or those who died in service to the country.

The issue has returned to the front burner in the wake of revelations that Trump said that retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley should be “executed” for committing an act of “treason.”

Can this clown, Trump, be any more despicable than that? Oh, probably.

Milley told an interviewer that he served this country while wearing an Army uniform for more than 44 years. He said Trump’s attack on him was in reality an attack on all the men and women who serve. He is too much of a gentleman to respond specifically to the idiocy that poured out of Trump’s mouth.

This latest example simply adds to the litany of insults he has heaped on those of us who served our nation in uniform. He called the late Sen. John McCain a “loser” because he was captured by the enemy after being shot down during the Vietnam War. He denigrated a Gold Star family whose son died in combat in Iraq.

Trump has never served “the public” in any capacity — even while sitting in the Oval Office for four years. So, for this guy to denigrate a decorated Army general by suggesting he should be executed for treason simply goes beyond all that is sane.

Donald Trump has lost his mind.

national news

Why didn’t Dems help?

One might be inclined to ask: If Kevin McCarthy’s loss of the U.S. House speakership was a result of his working with House Democrats to forestall a government shutdown, why didn’t Democrats vote to keep him in office?

I think I know. It is because Democrats don’t trust him any more than the MAGA cult followers who led the charge to oust him.

You see, Kevin McCarthy is a sort of closet MAGA minion. He condemned Donald Trump for his conduct on 1/6, then went immediately to Mar-a-Lago to have his picture taken with the former POTUS, grinning and embracing the leader of the MAGA cult.

How do you work with someone like that?

Moreover, then McCarthy had the MAGA crowd to whom he had to make plenty of promises in order to be elected speaker. It took House members 15 ballots to hand the gavel to McCarthy. One of the stipulations, apparently, was that he shouldn’t work Democrats and that under a new rule, a single House member could call for a motion to vacate the speakership if McCarthy broke any of the rules … to which he agreed!

He broke the rule about working with Democrats and that prompted Rep. Matt Gaetz to file the motion to vacate the speakership.

Democrats sat still and listened to Republicans argue among themselves on the House floor today.

This entire discussion and the resulting vote demonstrated clearly that Kevin McCarthy was no more the Man of the House than the guy who sweeps the floor at the end of the day.

Thus, I won’t feel one little bit of sympathy for this individual.

national news

House makes history!

The U.S. House of Representatives today made history, but you can bet your last buck that it won’t bask in the legacy this current Republican Party majority has created for the legislative body.

The House has booted the speaker out of his office, handing the job on an interim basis to Rep. Patrick McHenry.

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been stripped of his title, stripped of what little power he actually possessed and sent to the back bench, possibly to sulk or to plot how he might regain the speakership.

McCarthy fell victim to the MAGA caucus within the Republican majority, which was slim to be sure. His sin? He worked with Democrats on finding a 45-day solution to keep the government running and averting a killer shutdown. The MAGA minions didn’t like that, so they rebelled.

One of them, Matt Gaetz, filed the motion to “vacate” the speaker’s office. And it passed.

To be clear this is not a bipartisan problem. As a Democratic strategist, Cornell Belcher, said, “This is a Republican problem.” And it seems to be one of some standing within the party. The GOP sought to oust Speaker Newt Gingrich, then went after John Boehner.

I’m trying to imagine Democrats trying this kind of thing with, say, Speakers Nancy Pelosi, Tom Foley or Sam Rayburn.

The MAGA crowd has seized control of the Republican Party and today they proved for all the world to see how just how out of control it is and how it is unable to govern one-half of the legislative branch of government.

A friend of mine sent me a text message immediately after McCarthy got the boot that suggests that the GOP could “screw up a two-car funeral.”

Just when you think you’ve seen everything … well, then you get this! Holy crap!

business news, crime news

Truth about wealth is coming

Donald J. Trump’s actual wealth has been a discussion topic for as long as this clown has been in the public eye … which seems like forever.

Why? Because he brags about it constantly, bringing to my mind the notion that anyone who is truly wealthy doesn’t need to boast openly about it.

So now the former POTUS is on trial for financial fraud. He has been accused of inflating his assets to secure favorable business dealings. Does that surprise anyone, that this pathological liar would falsify his wealth to obtain loans at a favorable rate? Of course not. It doesn’t surprise me in the least, and I don’t even possess a fraction of the wealth that Trump actually has, which I am certain will be a lot less than what he has portrayed.

Against this backdrop we have the spectacle of Trump running for president for the third time. He is the prohibitive favorite for the Republican Party presidential nomination. How that can be is utterly beyond me. But he is.

Will the GOP cult that clings to this clown’s phoniness hang onto him if the trial for which he is being tried in New York end badly? Oh, probably. Because the MAGA morons who back him don’t know any better or refuse to realize they are backing someone who is a shadow of the titan he portrays himself to be.

However, what is unfolding in a New York courtroom is just another preliminary act leading up to the main events. Trials are pending on the pilfering of classified documents and on Trump’s role in the assault on the federal government on 1/6.

Still, the prelims appear to be pretty damn tantalizing in that they likely will reveal the whole truth about the wealth that Trump used to dupe enough voters to elect him POTUS in the first place.

national news

Speaker reaps what he sows?

Part of me is beginning to feel the teeny-tiniest pangs of sympathy for U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over the threats he is getting from the MAGA Moron caucus within the Republican Party House conference.

Then again …

The rest of me quashes that sympathy. The man knew what he was doing when he signed the deal with the MAGA devils that allowed him to ascend to the speakership after a 15-ballot effort when the current Congress convened at the start of the year.

The MAGA Morons are upset because McCarthy chose to work with Democrats by crafting a 45-day stopgap spending bill that averted a catastrophic government shutdown … for now! What’s next? One of the MAGA hotheads, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, vows to introduce a motion to vacate the speakership this week. He wants to be the lone House member who will call for the removal of McCarthy from the speaker’s office.

Once again, I would stand by that feeling of pain for McCarthy, except that he agreed to let the MAGA Morons have the authority to call for a vote if any of them grew disaffected by the job McCarthy is doing as speaker. Gaetz would be acting under House rules … to which McCarthy agreed when he was elected speaker.

All of this is providing a textbook study on the MAGA caucus’s real agenda, which has nothing to do with governance. It has everything to do with raising a stink whenever and wherever possible.

The MAGAites were able to keep funding for Ukraine war aid out of the spending bill. That wasn’t good enough. They want to slash more funds from vital domestic spending programs that assist Americans.

Now comes a potential crisis awaiting Speaker McCarthy. Do I want him to emerge from this scuffle? Yes, but only because a possible alternative — someone faithful to the MAGA Morons’ agenda — could emerge as the new Man of the House.

national news

45 days … nothing to cheer

U.S. House members must be high-fiving each other, slappin’ backs and telling themselves that they really know how to negotiate these deals.

It’s all just pure crap!

The House of Representatives has voted on a 45-day stopgap funding measure that reportedly will head off a potentially catastrophic government shutdown. The measure heads to the Senate, where it faces a friendlier audience.

This kind of government funding simply makes me sick!

Good government has no place in a House of Reps dominated by the MAGA-moron-club-of-kooks caucus within the Republican Party that boasts of being able to shut down the government if they don’t get their way on drastic spending cuts.

A much better way to run the federal government would be for all sides to come together and look for compromise. That’s not how Congress functions these days. The GOP majority is hanging by a shoestring. MAGA cultists keep threatening House Speaker Kevin McCarthy with his job if he doesn’t do their bidding.

The threat of a shutdown looms damn near all the time!

So, it appears Congress will set aside enough money to run the government for the next month and a half.

Then what? More of the same stubborn nonsense?

This is no way to govern!