Tag Archives: GOP

national news

Santos to run again?

Why in the name of political sanity does anyone outside of a New York congressional district care about this moron’s decision to seek re-election to a second term in the House of Representatives?

I guess it’s because of the circumstances of his election in the first place and the fact that he actually votes on legislation that affects you and me far away.

George Santos announced he is running for re-election to the House in 2024. Santos is the dipsh** who lied his way to election in 2022. He lied about damn near every aspect of his life: his parentage, his faith, his work background, his education, his marital status.

The Republican has become a laughingstock. He embarrasses all Americans who are concerned about electoral integrity. I am one of those Americans.

This clown needs to lose his re-election bid next year. Indeed, many within his own GOP are saying the same thing.

But … here’s the thing: Santos has zero shame. Were he to actually win re-election, I fear it could open the door to even more frauds traipsing through the halls of Congress, a place that already suffers from abysmal public opinion ratings.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Right-winger needs close scrutiny

How many times has this happened before? A politician who proclaims fealty to his wife, who stands on the shoulders of those who wrote holy scripture finds himself the subject of a possible investigation into conduct unbecoming of such a God-fearing human.

So it is with Texas state Rep. Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City, who has been accused of having sex with a legislative intern. Slaton, through his lawyer, calls the allegation trash. You would expect him to say such a thing.

Look, I am not going to presume this young man’s guilt. I do not know him well, but he and I are acquainted, if only through a couple of telephone conversations we have had since he took his Texas House seat prior to the start of the 2021 Legislature.

It’s just that pols such as Slaton open themselves up to extra-keen-eyed scrutiny when these allegations surface.

Former U.S. Rep. Van Taylor of Plano admitted to engaging in an affair with a woman while running for re-election in 2022. He, too, is a conservative Republican who touted his love for his wife. He made a big mistake, which he admitted to doing; Taylor then dropped out of his GOP primary race.

Do you remember the case of John Edwards, the 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president, who cheated on his late wife while she was battling cancer … all while parading her in front of crowds, telling them how much he loved her? Sickening!

These are just three examples of the danger of boasting about martial fidelity. I always find it offensive when a pol uses his wife as a political prop, declaring that we should vote for him because he’s been faithful to the vow he took to “love, honor and cherish” someone “for as long as both of you shall live.”

I hope for a quick resolution to this Bryan Slaton matter. Someone on his staff has corroborated the allegation. It falls now to a House committee to complete its probe into the veracity of the allegation.

It’s serious stuff, folks.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

More guns = more violence

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is quoted asserting that given the vast number of guns in American society, we should be “the safest country on Earth.”

Well, we aren’t. Not by a long shot.

Yet the National Rifle Association, at its annual meeting this weekend, is singing the same, tired mantra that the explosion of gun violence isn’t a “gun problem.” It is a “mental health problem.” It’s a “societal problem.” Donald Trump, the indicted ex-POTUS, told the NRA it’s a “spiritual problem.”

I will agree that all those factors have contributed to the violence. Yet the common denominator in all the massacres that have occurred in this country continues to be guns and the ease with which nut cases are able to acquire them.

The NRA and their Republican toadies in Congress are on the wrong side of history and of public opinion with their continual resistance to any reasonable legislation that could deter loons from obtaining guns and killing people.

Universal background checks are popular among most Americans, even most Republicans. That hold no water with the GOP and the NRA. They lean on the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which references a “well-regulated militia” as “being necessary to the security of a free State.” Can someone justify that the founders’ assertion that a well-regulated militia means any knuckle-dragger who’s able to purchase a firearm?

I continue to believe that there are legislative solutions that can be implemented that do nothing to infringe on law-abiding citizens from owing firearms.

Except that the NRA adheres to the all-or-nothing approach to interpreting the Constitution. The gun lobby’s stubborn resistance is going to get more Americans killed.

More guns mean more death and mayhem.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Judicial activism anyone?

RICHFIELD, Utah — A federal judge in Amarillo, Texas, has offered yet another example of how the MAGA cult of the Repubican Party has turned traditional GOP orthodoxy on its ear.

The standard GOP mantra used to be that the party hated activist judges, that they shouldn’t “legislate from the bench.”

Well, welcome to the new world of GOP judicial activism.

It reared its repulsive puss in the form of U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who ruled this past week that the abortion drug mifepristone shouldn’t be used to terminate a pregnancy. He suspended its use, which the Food and Drug Administration approved more than 20 years ago, and which women for decades have relied on to end health-endangering pregnancies.

I write this blog while sitting in a community that likely endorses the judge’s activist stance. No worries. I’ll be gone in the morning.

To suggest that the judge has launched a legislative battle from the bench is to be guilty of grotesque understatement.

The judge is a Donald Trump appointee. He succeeded an iconic figure in Texas Panhandle judicial circles, the late Judge Mary Lou Robinson, who likely never — not in a million years — would have tossed out judicial precedent in the manner exhibited by her successor.

Kacsmaryk has done the dirty work of the GOP members of the MAGA cult in Congress. Never mind that most Republicans oppose the judge’s decision, along with a significant majority of all Americans, who want to protect a woman’s reproductive rights.

The Justice Department has filed an appeal with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and is preparing to take the matter to the top of the judicial food chain, the U.S. Supreme Court.

As for Judge Kacsmaryk, he has tossed aside GOP political precedent by invoking the most judicially activist position possible in wiping out women’s rights.

I am fairly confident that the women, along with many milliions of other Americans, are going to have their say when the 2024 election rolls around.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump

Mixed feelings about POTUS 45’s campaign

I remain fairly convinced that the 45th president of the U.S. isn’t going to stay in the race for the White House in 2024.

It doesn’t bother me in the least that he would drop out to concentrate on fighting the bucketloads of legal trouble standing before him.

Nor does it bother me were he to stay in. Why? Because the moron remains a highly beatable Republican nominee for POTUS if the GOP faithful is stupid enough to nominate him in 2024.

The first indictment from the Manhattan grand jury appears to be just the first of several such actions awaiting the ex-POTUS. The more serious charges — tampering with election results, inciting the insurrection on 1/6 and squirreling away classified documents — all are grounds for criminal prosecution … in my humble view.

Thus, it seems to me that it is unlikely that even this idiot can continue to campaign for the White House.

If he does, big fu***** deal!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Cornyn a RINO? Hardly!

AMARILLO, Texas — A longtime friend of mine revealed something to me today I did not expect.

He called John Cornyn, the state’s senior U.S. senator, a Republican In Name Only. I could only respond with, “Cornyn a RINO? No, he isn’t.” My friend wasn’t to be deterred. Yes, he is, my friend said. So is George W. Bush and so, too, is the rest of the state “in danger” of becoming a “blue state.”

Ah, but then he laughed it all off. He said, “I guess it depends on your perspective.” Yep, boy howdy, dude!

My friend is a fellow I admire greatly, and I will continue to admire him and will call him my friend. I just am going to suppose that we won’t talk politics in the near — or likely distant — future.

I came back to where we lived for 23 years. I guess my discovery of my friend’s political outlook reminded me of just how “conservative” the right wing swings in this part of the world. It reminded me of how the Panhandle once served as a breeding ground for the John Birch Society, about how so many residents of this community adhered to the ultra right wing of the political spectrum.

My friend took a moment to note during our visit that I am “exposed to all them liberals in Dallas.” Therefore, it doesn’t bother me, he conjectured.

I then informed him that because of recent events in my life I am divorcing myself from politics — at least from the extent I have been involved in them in recent years. Yeah, I know that this is a “political” blog post, but its intent is to illustrate one of the discoveries I have made on my westward journey from my home in North Texas.

And so … the journey continues in the morning to places far out west.

Pacific Ocean? Here I come!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

‘Pork-barrel spending’ has vanished?

Whatever happened to the term once used by budget hawks to vilify politicians who spend money “recklessly”?

That would be “pork-barrel spending.” It has vanished, seemingly, from the contemporary glossary of verbiage in today’s contentious political climate.

I remember when a former U.S. senator from Texas, Republican Phil Gramm, would boast about “bringing home so much pork, I was afraid I would come down with trichinosis.”

“Pork” is the term that refers to special project appropriations that members of Congress sneak into legislation. You know what I mean: money for bridges, airport control towers, road-and-highway improvements, federal office complexes. The late Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, another Republican, once was vilified for his “bridge to nowhere” for which he managed to get money appropriated.

I am not entirely opposed to “pork-barrel spending” if the project that the Congress member is pushing actually does some good for the public. I mean, these men and women, do work for us. We demand certain things from our lawmakers and, as always, it takes money to make those things appear in our states and congressional districts.

In Collin County, Texas, we have a first-term Republican, Keith Self, representing our interests. I don’t hear much about his work to ensure federal money to improve our infrastructure. Instead, I hear him talking about “election integrity,” and a whole array of social issues that, frankly, mean next to nothing to me.

And our state’s two GOP U.S. senators — John Cornyn and Ted Cruz? They, too, are busy condemning Democrats to concentrate on matters of more immediate concern to their state.

If the MAGA crowd among the GOP congressional caucus is interested in controlling federal spending while they threaten to renege on our national debt — a truly catastrophic proposal — then they will resurrect “pork barrel spending” as a fiscal talking point.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

So many topsy-turvy examples

There exist almost too many examples of how modern politics has been turned on its ear that I dare not try to list them all.

Instead, I’ll focus on just one astonishing example. It deal with how Republicans in Congress, members of a political party that once revered law enforcement, have turned their backs on the men and women in blue.

For example, many of the MAGA cult among the GOP stand with the traitors who stormed the Capitol Building on 1/6 while seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. When given a chance to support the officers who defended them on that day, they turned their backs on them, declining to support recognition for their heroism.

What the hell?

Republicans used to campaign on “law and order.” They formerly held law enforcement in the highest esteem imaginable. They rarely opposed anything to do with helping the cops do their jobs.

These days they accuse the FBI of “targeting” the mobsters who stormed the Capitol. A delegation of MAGA members of the House now want to conduct hearings into whether the jailed traitors are being “mistreated.” They are pushing for reforms in the corrections system.

Why the change of heart? It must be that the traitors were seeking to install a defeated president into an office he lost legitimately through a free and fair — and legal — election.

What’s at least as troubling is that there is no debating this topsy-turviness with them. They stand behind their perverted notion that law enforcement suddenly has gotten corrupt. They adhere to the trash being spewed about the 1/6 assault being a “mostly peaceful” endeavor. It was nothing of the damn sort!

It was a full-out attack on our system of government and for any so-called responsible politician to call it otherwise is a disgraceful example of political perversion that must be stopped.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

business news

Biden tax strategy makes sense

Joe Biden drew a few lines in the sand today with his budget proposal, but I want to look at just one of them with this brief post: tax policy.

The president has dared congressional Republicans to oppose his notion that those who earn $400,000 per year should pay more in taxes than those who earn less than that. Interestingly, that is the amount of money that Biden earns annually as president of the United States; that amount, plus first lady Jill Biden’s teaching salary and the assorted other income he receives puts him in the rich folks’ tax bracket.

Middle-class Americans won’t pay more in taxes, Biden said.

Fine. I’m all for that. As an American on a fixed income who makes a little scratch each year writing freelance articles for a weekly newspaper group and for a public radio station in North Texas, I don’t want to pay any more in taxes than I do already.

Too many uber-rich Americans perform the Houdini act of not paying taxes. Ditto for corporations, according to the president.

Joe Biden has positioned himself as being “for the average American” and has positioned his political foes — namely Republicans in Congress — as being in the corner of the “rich and powerful.”

Hmm. Which side am I going to take? Oh, wait! I am one of those average Americans for whom the president says he is fighting.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Biden budget = political weapon

Let’s put it all on the table: President Biden’s announcement of a new federal budget proposal is aimed at a political audience, not at anyone in Congress who he can persuade to join him in the effort to advance the “values” he espouses.

Joe Biden ventured to Pennsylvania to unveil a budget he says will cut the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade. That is, to borrow a phrase, a Big F****** Deal.

He wants to raises taxes on rich Americans and corporations. He wants to preserve Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act. The president wants to shore up our military, our national intelligence network, the fight for Ukraine’s sovereignty. Biden wants to make community college attendance free.

Is this going to fly with what he referred to continuously today with the “MAGA Republicans”? Not a chance, man!

Instead, he has laid out a predicate for his 2024 re-election effort, which many believe he will announce soon. President Biden is going to put congressional Republicans on record as opposing the very things he said he wants to do.

I am all in with what he wants to accomplish.

Of course, looming mightily over all this is the threat by Republicans to crash the world economy by allowing the United States to default on the national debt that it has accrued since the beginning of the Republic. The president made that point, too, telling Republicans that they had a hand in running up that debt and that the U.S. Constitution requires the nation to maintain its “full faith and credit.”

Republicans, particularly the know-nothings who comprise the MAGA cabal, need to understand that they cannot mess with the national debt without collapsing the entire world economy. Got it? They had better!

President Biden’s budget as he has presented it won’t get through Congress. A big part of me believes the president — who knows how Congress works — understands that, but he has thrown down the gauntlet and dared the GOP to pick it up.

johnkanelis_92@hotmaial.com