Monthly Archives: June 2025

military news

The MAGA morons are right! Who knew?

Never in a zillion years would I have imagined saying what I am about to say … which is that the MAGA cabal that powered Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency are correct to object to any direct American involvement in the dispute between Israel and Iran.

This dispute inside the Republican Party is an amazing thing to witness. Trump campaigned for the presidency vowing to end our involvement in wars seemingly without end. Yet now he is pondering whether to launch air strikes against Iran with the aim of destroying the country’s capability to develop nuclear weapons.

Which is the reason why Israel hit them hard in the first place!

Some Republicans are lobbying Trump to launch the strikes. The MAGA crowd says Trump would break a key campaign promise by doing so. The MAGA goons are right! Can you believe I just said that? Neither can I.

Israel already has plenty of military capability to defend itself against Iran. It also has the know-how to strike military targets. The mission that began this exchange was years in the planning and the Israeli Defense Force decided the time is right now to hit the Iranians hard. So, it did.

Not only did the Israeli air force strike hardened targets, it managed to kill key Iranian military leaders it had identified.

Trump said he will decide within two weeks whether to launch strikes that could include huge bunker-buster bombs that only the United States can deploy.

Where does it end? How do we get out of such an engagement? And how many young American lives might we lose in this effort?

Listen to your political base, Donald Trump. They are correct!

national news, political news

Shades of earlier intraparty battles

I am amazed at the level of surprise expressed by the talking heads over the growing rift between the MAGA wing of the Republican Party and the rest of once-Grand Old Party.

Why, they just cannot believe the party that is so loyal to Donald J. Trump would turn on itself over whether to go to war with Iran or to resolve the growing problem with immigration.

Really? You cannot believe it? Those of us of a certain age remember another time when another great American political party damn near tore itself to shreds over the conduct of the Vietnam War.

The Summer of Love was anything but amorous when I graduated from high school in 1967. Democrats tore at each other’s throats over the war. It was the Doves vs. the Hawks. A lot of young men were torn about whether to join the war effort or dodge the whole thing. I didn’t get caught up in the struggle. Uncle Sam called on me the following summer and I did my duty.

The nation was torn asunder by the rebellion within the great Democratic Party. The Hawks followed the dictates of President Johnson, who had his allies in Congress. The Doves became smitten first by Sen. Eugene McCarthy and then Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

That was then. The MAGA wing is angry with others within the Republican Party. This time it’s MAGA vs. The Establishment Wing of the GOP.

Where am I going with this? I don’t know, eaxcept to remind you that the country’s internal makeup is strong enough to withstand these internecine battles. The TEA Party once rose to challenge the GOP establishment. My goodness, the very nation declared war on itself in the 1860s over the issue of slavery and it survived once the killing stopped.

I don’t give a crap about the MAGA dipshits who have aligned with our nation’s adversaries in Moscow and who think the current POTUS is a man of character and achievement.

However, none of this new to the nation that was founded on the principle of dissent and seeking “redress of grievances.”

national news

News watching: testament to futility

Some of you might recall an earlier blog post in which I declared my intention to consume less news from TV because if found it (a) boring and (b) not very informative.

My semi-boycott is continuing. I’m home alone these days with just my two puppies — Sabol and Endo — and we spend time talking to each other, although I do most of the talking to them. The TV is turned off.

Occasionally, though, I switch it on to kinda/sorta get caught on the day’s events and on occasion I find myself watching a congressional hearing featuring one of Donald Trump’s sycophantic Cabinet picks.

Then it dawns on me why I launched the boycott in the first place. Invariably, this happens: a House member or senator — usually a Democrat — asks a question of the witness who then proceeds to traipse down some rhetorical path where the congressperson doesn’t want to go. The witness tries to continue on that path, the House member or senator seeks to steer them in another direction. They talk over each other — at the same time! As a general rule, the questions asked are relevant; the answers, such as they are, veer away from the point.

To be clear, neither party has a monopoly on this form of rhetorical evasion. Democratic Cabinet members have been hectored and harassed by Republican members of the House and Senate. I watched it unfold during the Biden and Obama administrations. I get that this a bipartisan affliction.

The here and now, though, is what is revelant. Trump has selected an array of ignoramuses for the Cabinet. They don’t know policy. They don’t care about details or even about facts. As I have pondered the lack of quality among these men and women, it occurs to me they reflect the ignorance and apathy of the nimrod who selected them.

I’ll stay current with events as they unfold. I just won’t rely on TV to deliver the news. We have plenty of legitmate news organizations to tell us their version of the truth. It falls on each of us, though, to parse through it all and discern our own version of what’s right.

military news

Trump’s parade falls flat

Well, kids, it turns out Donald J. Trump didn’t get nearly the birthday wish he wanted for himself with the military parade through Washington, DC, falling flat on its face.

I intend to explore briefly why that happened.

First of all, it well might be that most Americans finally — finally! — have caught on to Trump’s inauthentic and insincere reverence for the military. He evaded being drafted during the Vietnam War, citing those mysterious bone spurs. Now he’s commander in chief of the world’s mightiest military, so he wanted to stage a parade that coincidentally fell on his 79th birthday.

He said he wanted to salute the Army’s 250th birthday. You and I know the real reason. He wanted to call attention to himself. And that, I suggest, likely didn’t get past the hundreds of thousands of no-show Americans who stayed away from the event.

Trump reportedly lashed out at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the failure of the parade. No problem there. Hegseth can’t find his ass with both hands as he tries to run the Pentagon. The failure of this event goes far beyond Hegseth’s incompetence. It goes straight to the guts of the man at the top.

Trump only recently said he cannot stand the sight of wounded warriors and said he didn’t want them present for presidential photo ops. He called a Vietnam War hero, the late Sen. John McCain, a loser because he got captured — and was tortured — by the enemy. He has denigrated a Gold Star family because they are Muslim and even though the couple’s son died in combat wearing an Army uniform.

The parade was the kind of thing seen in Moscow or Pyongyang. Except that it never materialized in anything approaching the manner that Donald Trump envisioned.

I am going to hope for all my worth that Americans finally are awakening to the charade that the president of the U.S.A. has been leading.

crime news

What’s next from Trump?

A dear friend from Germany, an astute follower of American politics, sent me a message overnight that wondered: Now they are handcuffing U.S. senators. What is next, my friend?

To my friend, Martin, I have no answer. I don’t know who’s next or what’s next as we watch Donald Trump’s administration lay waste to the rule of law.

Allow me to put this into a bit of perspective.

Trump pardoned hundreds of traitorous mobsters for the crimes for which they were convicted relating to the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on our Capitol. Many of those pardons were convicted of assaulting police officers, of injuring others and of desecrating the halls of Congress while seeking to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Just this week, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., attended a town hall hosted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and was placed in handcuffs and thrown onto the ground to silence him from pursuing his constitutionally guaranteed right to protest government policy.

What in the name of justice is wrong with this picture? Damn near everything I can consider!

We are witnessing the piecemeal dismantling of our rule of law by a presidential administration bent on the idea that Trump’s views are the only views that matter. Anyone who protests them can become subject to the kind of mistreatment that befell Alex Padilla.

To think that Trump would have us believe that people around the world admire this individual’s conduct is to believe that the sun will rise over the western horizon tomorrow morning.

I will have to remind my German friend that our Constitution remains strong and that millions of Americans join me in hoping it is strong enough to withstand this frontal assault.

military news, national news

When these men speak …

When men of the caliber of several general-grade military officers speak with one voice about the conduct of the commander in chief, it is time to take heed.

They all say essentially the same thing about Donald Trump. That he doesn’t honor the office he occupies and is embarking on a dangerous path toward a dictatorship.

Former Marine Gens. John Kelly and James Mattis, former Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, former Army Gen. Martin Dempsey all speak with a single voice. Mattis said Trump is purposely seeking to divide the nation. Kelly said we need to gauge who we elect as president on the basis of his character. Mullen said he has been reluctant to speak out but we have reached a “transformative point.” Dempsey said U.S. citizens are not “the enemy.”

I will follow the wisdom of these patriots at any time before I would believe a single statement that flies out of Trump’s mouth. These men all have fought for their nation. One of them — Gen. Kelly — lost a son who died in combat. They know better than most of us the value of public service and the price one can pay in service to the nation we all love.

I have stated before that Donald Trump has spent his entire adult life in pursuit of self-enrichment. That is continuing to this very moment. To think Americans elected someone with zero regard for the democratic principles he pledged to protect and defend is an affront to anyone who calls themselves a patriot.

entertainment news

RIP, Brian Wilson

What does one say about the death of a man whose musical genius comes along just once in any normal human being’s lifetime.

Brian Wilson was the rarest of geniuses. He founded a musical group, the Beach Boys with his brothers, a cousin and a boyhood pal. They made music for 60 years that stands the test of time to this very day.

He blended exquisite harmonies with extraordinary production values and left a legacy that will live far beyond Wilson’s 82 years on this Earth. Indeed, they might, indeed, live forever.

Wilson led a well-chronicled troubled life. He was beset with drug addiction, personality disorders, emotional fragility caused in large part by his well-known stage fright. He fought through it all.

He continued to make music that will last through the ages.

I am not equipped rhetorically to pay appropriate tribute to this once-in-a-lifetime talent. I just know in my heart that his music helped me come of age in the 1960s … and for that he will have my eternal gratitude.

media news

ABC acted correctly in firing journalist

ABC News had no choice but to take the action it took in firing veteran journalist Terry Moran who let his bias get in the way of his doing his job.

The network had suspended Moran over a social media message he posted declaring that Donald Trump and chief White House aide Stephen Miller were conveyers of hate. He said they both drew their “nourishment” from the hate they spew regularly.

That was a seriously bad call. On Moran’s part!

ABC’s decision to not review Moran’s contract became quite obvious immediately after the network suspended him. Moran had been with the network for 28 years and had drawn high praise for the work he did in covering politics, government and public policy. For him to reveal his contempt for Trump and for Miller betrayed every single tenet of fair-minded journalism imaginable. He took the message down immediately, but the damage was done. As a former colleague of mine used to observe: You cannot unhonk a horn.

Whether one agrees with Moran’s assessment of these two men is absolutely not the issue. The issue is that Moran can never be trusted to tell news viewers the objective, unvarnished truth about what he is reporting on issues involving the Trump administration.

I applaud ABC News for the decision it made regading Terry Moran. His job was to keep his personal feelings about the people he covers to himself. He failed miserably to uphold that commitment.

local news

What gives on US 380?

My 75-year-old trick knee is throbbing for the first time in a good while and it’s telling me there might something amiss with that big apartment construction job that has been underway on U.S. 380 here in Princeton, Texas.

The site has gone dark … again! No sign of any work being done there for about the past three weeks.

You’ll recall that the general contractor walked off the job about three years ago when he/she got into a snit with the developer. I thought they would just knock the buildings down and start over with something different. I didn’t know what I was thinking.

The Princeton City Council agreed to let the developer proceed with a new contractor. It set a timetable for completion of the 300-unit complex billed originally as a “luxury apartment” site.

I don’t know what’s going on. I merely am using this blog to vent my continuing frustration with the on-off-again project that doesn’t seem to be gaining any traction.

Just think, soon the Texas highway department is going to tear the crap out of the roadway that runs through my city … making any commuting through Princeton a nightmare.

Uncategorized

Trump makes startling admission

The Donald Trump-Elon Musk bromance is a goner, but left virtually untouched has been a startling admission that Trump made while denigrating the character of the world’s richest human being.

Musk has called Trump’s “big beautiful bill” an “abomination” and said Trump should be impeached. Trump’s response? He called Musk a man with a serious drug problem. I forget the exact words he used, but he said that Musk has been battling drug addiction.

OK. Here’s what is so remarkable. Trump hired a drug addict to remake the federal government, allegedly. He hired a guy he said couldn’t be trusted to remain sober long enough to make intelligent decisions about the future of government programs upon which millions of Americans depend.

What the f***?

Of course, Trump didn’t offer a single shred of proof of the allegation he has made about Musk’s alleged drug habit. The point, though, is that Trump has said time and again how he relies on hiring the “best people” to do the work on his behalf.

Which is it, dude?

Moreover, where is the media on all this? No one has explored the substance of what Trump has alleged about Mr. Tesla/SpaceX and the things he says drives this world’s richest human.

This idiot, the president, needs to be held accountable for the recklessness of his rhetoric.