Tag Archives: GOP

national news

Santos could survive expulsion effort

U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia put in on the table with these words: “I rise to give notice of my intent to raise a question of the privileges of the House. … Rep. George Santos be, and hereby is, expelled from the House of Representatives.”

Simple, yes? Santos is the liar who lied his way to winning public office. He also is under indictment for mail fraud and wire fraud.

Santos lied about virtually every aspect of his personal, educational and professional life while campaigning in 2022.  He duped the voters his New York district to elect the Republican.

Yes, he deserves to be booted out. It’s complicated. Why?

Because the Republicans hold a slim majority in the House; Santos represents a district that is traditionally Democratic. Speaker Kevin McCarthy needs Santos’s vote to advance MAGA Republicans’ agenda.

Compare that with what happened earlier this month in Texas, where state House members voted unanimously to kick GOP state Rep.  Bryan Slaton of Royse City out of the House.

The Republicans in Texas have a significant majority in the House. There is no political price for the GOP to pay for booting someone out of a safe Republican seat.

The GOP is walking a fine line in Washington. Thus, a vote to kick a serial liar out of the House — I am sad to report — appears doomed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Debt-ceiling fight enters critical phase

Congress and the White House are fighting over an issue that doesn’t deserve this level of political bloodshed.

I refer to the debt ceiling. Congress should increase it as it has done always since the beginning of the Republic. But no-o-o-o! The Republican caucus in Congress, led by the MAGA cultists among its members, are seeking to make some sort of idiotic statement about the need to cut spending before increasing the ceiling.

How can I state this more clearly: If the nation defaults on its debts, the economy is going to crash; we will lose millions of jobs; interest rates will skyrocket; the world will feel the pain this nation will inflict on itself.

Do congressional MAGA cultists really believe this is sound fiscal policy? It is nothing of the sort!

I say all this as a way to suggest that I believe President Biden and the congressional leadership are going to find a solution before the June 1 deadline believed to be when the ceiling must be lifted.

If they do, and I believe it will happen, we are surely going to be treated with all kinds of back-slapping, high-fiving and self-congratulations from our political leaders over the courage they showed in ending this crisis.

It’s all crap!

I am afraid that the end will last only until the next debt-ceiling crisis arrives.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Get ready for bruising fight, Mme. VPOTUS

Kamala Harris, this message is directed at you, for your benefit and for — I hope — your political survival.

It appears, Mme. Vice President, that the Republican smear machine might be targeting you in unprecedented ways, using heretofore unseen and unheard messages aimed at denigrating you, your husband, and perhaps even your extended family.

You know your place in history as the first Black, first woman, first South Asian ever elected to the nation’s second-highest office. No need to remind you of that.

However, it is those trailblazing traits that will become targets for the GOP smear mongers. They’re out there.

We saw them try to demonize Barack Obama — the first Black man elected president — in 2008. There was the lie about his birthplace and about his associations with certain political luminaries. The GOP, led by Donald Trump, sought to make Barack Obama somehow unqualified to run for president, let alone serve in the office.

I can feel the same sort of thing happening to you, Mme. VP, as you campaign for re-election alongside Joe Biden.

I feel the compelling need to tell you that I consider you eminently qualified to serve as vice president. Yes, President Biden’s age is going to be a campaign issue, too. Get ready for the onslaught, Mme. Vice President, questioning whether you are up to the job if the need should arise. That will be the sexist element of the campaign against you.

I watched you during your time in the Senate as you took down political foes with steely questioning. I have no doubt — none at all! — that you brought that same backbone to the office you now hold.

I will just implore you to ensure that it holds up under what will be relentless attack. I have faith in you.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Allred’s calm vs. Cruz’s fire

Colin Allred knows he has a steep hill to climb if he hopes to knock Ted Cruz off his U.S. Senate perch. If he continues to acknowledge that Texas remains a solidly Republican state, he will have to go after the Republicans who cannot stomach Cruz’s bellicosity and his self-serving aggrandizement.

Allred is a Dallas-area congressman who recently announced his intention to battle Cruz in 2024. Cruz, meanwhile, has said he intends to seek re-election, although he hasn’t yet made it official.

If Allred is the Democratic nominee for the Senate, I am going to do all I can from my North Texas venue to assist him. I might even donate some money. Hey, I can do that now I am no longer employed by a media organization.

The Texas Tribune has published a story comparing Allred’s measured, calm, across-the-aisle approach to governing to Cruz’s fire-breathing partisan rants. Allred doesn’t yell at witnesses during committee hearings, unlike Cruz, who seems to delight in seeking to shame and embarrass those who testify before the committees on which he sits.

The Tribune reported: “Knowing how to work with everyone, knowing how to listen to people, how to engage, how to come up with solutions, and really, how to bring people together — that’s what leadership is,” said U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, a Houston Democrat whose friendship with Allred grew after both flipped Republican-held seats in 2018. “And frankly, that’s the leadership we need in our state right now.”

Can you imagine anyone saying something like about the Cruz Missile? Well … I cannot.

Democrat Colin Allred brings contrasting style to race against Ted Cruz | The Texas Tribune

I can’t even begin to predict that Texans will endorse Rep. Fletcher’s view of the leadership that Allred would bring to the Senate. I am left only to hope that Texans have grown weary of Cruz’s bombast … and his utter lack of accomplishment of anything constructive during his time in the Senate.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Trump: accountable

I have been trying to process the guilty verdict handed down in that trial involving E. Jeanne Carroll and Donald J. Trump.

Carroll had sued Trump alleging he raped her in the 1990s. She didn’t get the rape conviction she sought, but she got damn near everything else.

So, with a jury deciding in less than four hours after an eight-day trial, we now can call Trump a sexual abuser and a slanderer. He sexually abused Carroll and defamed her character.

The jury decided Carroll should get $5 million in damages.

Trump said he plans to appeal. Here’s the best part: Trump is accusing the presiding judge of being a “Trump hater.”

Hmm. Well, consider this: The judge gave Trump every opportunity to change his mind and testify in his own defense. He didn’t.

The judge went far beyond what is normal by giving Trump ample avenues to defend himself. That isn’t the action of a “Trump hater.”

I am glad for Carroll. She didn’t deserve to be treated in a defamatory manner by Donald Trump. And Trump doesn’t deserve to be considered the frontrunner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

But if the GOP is going to nominate a twice-impeached, once-indicted (for now) and convicted sexual abuser for president, then the party is in far worse condition than any of us ever imagined.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Why worry about Santos?

For the life of me I cannot fathom easily why I should give a damn about a freshman Republican congressman from New York.

But I kinda do give a damn! Here’s why.

George Santos has been indicted by the Department of Justice on a number of charges related the bucketload of lies Santos told while getting elected to Congress in 2022. They relate to mail fraud and campaign expenses.

Santos has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.

Whatever … here’s the deal about this serial liar.

He has become a top target of Democratic Party strategists looking to flip the House district back to their corner after Santos’s surprise victory in 2022.

Santos probably ought to just resign his seat and concentrate on defending himself in court. Were he to do that, it would reduce the GOP’s razor thin House majority even more, giving Speaker Kevin McCarthy even more reason to complain about sleepless nights.

Let me remind you, too, that McCarthy had to make a whole lot of concessions to the MAGA wing of his GOP caucus just to win election as speaker … on the 15th ballot.

Thus, it becomes important that George Santos be held accountable for (a) the lies he told to get elected and (b) the allegations that he misspent campaign money given to him by those who swallowed the baloney he served them.

I suppose I should mention, too, that even his Republican colleagues cannot stand him. Do you recall seeing anyone standing with this liar defending him for the deceitful campaign he waged?

I suppose one of the lessons all voters should take from this loser’s saga is to remain vigilant when someone talks about family members surviving the Holocaust or 9/11. Santos’s lies on those tragedies helped open the door to all the lies he told to win voters’ trust.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

They must avoid debacle

The debt-ceiling debacle that might befall the nation is an event that no sane politician anywhere should want to occur.

Republicans for the first time in the nation’s history are threatening to withhold the votes to raise the debt ceiling because they want cuts in spending to which they have contributed along with their Democratic colleagues.

Now that a Democrat is in the White House, though, Republicans are insisting on massive spending cuts to offset what historically — since the beginning of the republic — has been a pro forma vote to increase the debt ceiling. Where was the GOP outrage over spending when Republicans were in the White House?

Failure to do so would put the nation in default for the first time ever. The consequence of that? Well, every economist on Earth says the nation would spiral into economic catastrophe.

Millions of jobs would be lost; interest rates would skyrocket, making home- and auto-buying impossible; the stock market would collapse; retirement accounts would vaporize; and — this is where it really hits home for me — Social Security payments would be suspended.

I am on a fixed income. I rely on my Social Security income to pay my own bills. What’s more, if my retirement account goes poof!, then I won’t have that money on which could pay those bills.

How can I say this clearly? Do not allow any of this happen, GOP members of Congress! You will pay dearly for it at the next election.

That ain’t a threat. It’s a lead-pipe promise!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Slaton quits House … good riddance!

Bryan Slaton, who was about to be expelled by his colleagues in the Texas House of Representatives, has decided to spare himself the humiliation of being booted out of office.

He quit the office on his own!

Slaton, a Royse City Republican, had been investigated for having sex with an intern after serving her alcohol. A House committee had recommended he be expelled from the House, which was set to vote Tuesday on whether to throw his sorry backside out of the place. There still might be a vote, even though Slaton’s gone from the body.

Well, the second-term legislator is done embarrassing the House in which he served, the state that must live by the laws he endorses and his constituents who sent him to the House to do their bidding … which did not include boorish behavior.

This self-proclaimed Christian conservative, a married man who said with no appreciation for the irony he expressed about he now gets to “spend time with my young family,” has disgraced himself.

State Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, said this on social media: “His resignation gave no apology to the young woman he violated, his wife whom he betrayed or his district that he failed. No remorse. No acceptance of responsibility. He’s the victim that rides off into the sunset. That was the resignation of a narcissist.”

Good riddance!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Don’t misrepresent vote

Memo to Marie Biggs, a Democratic precinct chair in Collin County, Texas: You need to cease misrepresenting the nature of the recent election to the Collin College Board of Regents.

I returned home today after spending a couple of nights way and found a single-sheet flyer in my front door. It speaks to the need for Democrats to get out and vote for three candidates running for the board of regents: Megan Wallace, Scott Coleman and Stacey Donald.

“Turnout has been extremely low,” Biggs wrote in her note. “That means we have a chance t beat the MAGA Republicans on the Collin College board,” she wrote.

Hold on a second, Ms. Biggs! The college board is elected on non-partisan ballots. No one runs as a Democrat or a “MAGA Republican.” A regent or a candidate for the board can adhere to policies that tilt one way or the other.

However, to call on voters to “vote for the following Democrats” constitutes a gross misrepresentation of the election.

It reminds me of a ploy I witnessed in Amarillo in the late 1990s in the race for mayor, another non-partisan office. A candidate seeking to defeat incumbent Mayor Kel Seliger sent out literature asking “all good Republicans” to vote for her. I was editing an opinion page at the local newspaper and we called out Mary Alice Brittain for doing the same thing that Marie Biggs did this weekend. Brittain lost the race for mayor … and then disappeared.

Listen up, Ms. Biggs: Take care in characterizing these campaigns.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

When is it enough?

When in the name of national sanity is enough going to be enough, that the latest case of mass slaughter at the hands of a madman with an AR-15 will prompt some legislation that could prevent future carnage?

The latest spasm of violence occurred just down the highway from my North Texas home — and even closer to my precious family members who live in Allen. The Allen Outlet Mall was the scene when a lunatic got out of his vehicle and opened fire. He killed eight people, including a 5-year-old before an Allen Police Department officer arrived and shot the gunman dead.

I want to shake the cop’s hand one day and thank him for his service to the community.

Meanwhile, we hear from President Biden who — once again — ordered flags to fly at half-staff and also called for a ban on AR-15s and asked Congress to approve universal background checks and increase the minimum age of purchasing a firearm from 18 to 21.

And what do we hear from Texas pols? GOP Gov. Greg Abbott said the answer lies in mental health treatment. Yes, governor, it does … but it must not be mutually exclusive to what the president is seeking.

Texas GOP U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, said he and his wife are praying for the families and the community. Thanks, senator, but prayers aren’t working. Then comes newly elected U.S. Rep. Keith Self, another Republican who represents Collin County in the House, with a remark that “God is in charge” of everything. Right, Rep. Self. Explain how God continues to allow this kind of slaughter to recur.

I agree with Gov. Abbott about the need to wage war against mental illness. I also agree with President Biden about banning AR-15s and high-capacity magazines, background checks and raising the age of those who want to buy firearms. These approaches are not mutually exclusive!

I want to remind everyone that most Americans — of all political stripes — favor the approach that Biden seeks. Yet our governing institutions keep ignoring the will of the people.

All the while, lunatics keep slithering into plain view to slaughter innocent victims.

Enough is enough!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com