Tag Archives: GOP

Biden inquiry: waste of time … and money

Congressional Republicans approved the President Biden impeachment inquiry a few months ago.

Their aim — and, yes, their desire — is to find something on which to impeach the president. They have come up empty. There’s no “there, there,” to borrow a phrase from the late Gertrude Stein.

It just appears to me that there never will be evidence of a “high crime” or a “misdemeanor” on which to impeach the president.

If ever we are witnessing a vendetta, this is it. Republicans still are steaming over the House’s impeachment — twice, in fact — of the president who most recently wore the GOP label. (Be advised that I won’t mention the moron’s name on this blog). 

Yeah, I know the Senate acquitted him but only because the GOP majority in the upper chamber lacked the guts to convict him of (a) soliciting a political favor from a foreign head of state and (b) inciting the mob to storm the Capitol Building on Jan. 6. I point out, too, that on the second impeachment, the Senate recorded 57 votes to convict the POTUS of inciting the mob, but the constitutional standard required the Senate to find 67 votes to boot the president from office.

In both cases, you had actual high crimes on which to convict, but it didn’t happen.

Republicans are launching their own inquiry into whether to impeach Joe Biden. I am still scratching my noggin and wondering: What in the name of vengeance is the crime? What has Joe Biden done, specifically, to merit this phony inquiry? 

Has anyone produced anything resembling a crime, or an allegation of a crime? No! They have not! Instead, we now hear that a key witness who was supposed to produce the goods has been indicted for lying to the FBI. Pretty damn credible, eh?

This matter will produce the same result that the GOP witch hunt into “Benghazi” produced. Not a damn thing!

It is a monumental waste of time. Indeed, it is a waste of money that Republicans keep telling us we cannot afford to spend on important issues that matter.

Haley faces last stand

Nikki Haley is facing a potential last stand in South Carolina, where she once served as governor and where she appears to be headed for a drubbing by an individual who has no business running for — let alone occupying — the presidency of the United States.

Haley says she isn’t quitting, regardless of where she ends up when the votes are counted Saturday. She’ll continue to battle the GOP frontrunner all the way to the finish, she said.

We’ll see about that.

The former POTUS is facing a court date in March. Another one might loom soon after that one. Then there might be a major court battle for the former Liar in Chief to wage. That’s the one alleging that he instigated a hostile takeover attempt of the government, by blocking the counting of 2020 electoral votes that determined that Joe Biden had been elected president.

The former POTUS has been living the Big Lie since Biden defeated him. He has been convicted of sexually assaulting an author, been levied fines totaling nearly a half-billion dollars. There’s more to come.

Still, he’s the GOP frontrunner in a contest where character no longer matters.

He leads Haley by 20-something or nearly 30 percentage points. How the former governor justifies staying in the race is a mystery.

She said she’s in it for the duration. It might be that she cannot stomach the idea of remaining faithful to the pledge she made to support the GOP nominee if it isn’t her.

Time is about to tell us the truth about that pledge … and whether Nikki Haley is in it for keeps.

Loathe the man and his standing

My noggin cannot comprehend a lot of things in life, so to be clear I want to stipulate that at times I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Among the more incomprehensible elements of life that puzzles me is the standing that the 45th POTUS continues to have among Americans who think he deserves another term in the White House.

I won’t regurgitate the many negative comments I have made about him since the moment he and his wife rode down the NYC office tower escalator in June 2015 as he announced his first run for the presidency.

I’ll make one exception, though. I want to remind every reader of this blog of this fact, which is beyond dispute: This bozo spent his entire adult professional life — every … waking … minute of it — with one goal in mind: self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement. He did not devote a single moment of his miserable life to public service.

Yet he stood there and proclaimed himself to be the champion of the “little guy,” the individual he personally loathed as a “loser” and a chump. He called himself a populist, even though he likely doesn’t know the definition of the type of pol he proclaimed himself to be.

His goal in life was to make lots of money for himself. It has been revealed now in court proceedings brought against him that he is as Mitt Romney described him: a “phony and a fraud.”

Anyone human being who feels the need to declare out loud the he is “really rich” and “really smart” never achieves such wealth, nor is he smart enough to know that undeniable fact.

Yet here this guy stands. He was impeached twice by the U.S. House. He has been indicted four times by federal and state grand juries on 91 criminal counts. He vows to be “your retribution” if he’s elected later this year.

And they still believe in this guy?

God help us if this all comes to pass.

He still can become POTUS?

The numbskull who wants to become the next president of the United States has been determined unfit to run a business in New York.

A judge has fined him $355 million because he defrauded investors over his supposed vast wealth. This is on top of the $88 million he’s been ordered to pay a journalist for (a) raping her and (b) defaming her character.

And yet … the U.S. Constitution apparently continues to clear the way for this idiot to campaign for the Republican Party presidential nomination and then — if nominated — run for the U.S. presidency.

What in the world is wrong with this picture?

Where is the ‘high crime’?

Alejandro Mayorkas has made history in a fashion he likely never imagined.

He is the first Cabinet secretary to be impeached since 1876 by the U.S. House of Representatives, which made another run at it and got the job done by a single vote.

Here’s the rub … and it’s a beaut. The House GOP caucus, led by the MAGA mob of malevolent misfits, cannot find a “high crime” or a “misdemeanor” to allege against the Homeland Security secretary. It states only that he is derelict in his duty to secure the southern border.

What utter, compete and nonsensical bullsh**!

The House GOP caucus is not interested in the least in governing. It wants to stick it to the Democrats whenever possible. Mayorkas has done his job, but it isn’t nearly good enough to satisfy the MAGA goons in charge of the House’s lower congressional chamber.

Good news can be found. The Senate won’t convict Mayorkas of any so-called crime. Why? Because there isn’t any. More good news: Democrats can use this sh** show as a campaign argument in their effort to solidify their Senate majority and the taking back of control in the House.

We are witnessing a disgraceful hijacking of a once-great political party. It sickens me to my core.

Speaker In Name Only?

Mike Johnson is likely to have earned a title he wishes he could shed, which would be Speaker In Name Only.

The speaker of the U.S. House is a SINO, given the result last night in the New York special congressional election that saw voters flip that district from Republican to Democrat, as Tom Suozzi, a former three-term congressman won his old seat back.

Suozzi replaces the former congressman — and infamous lying sack of pig dookie — Republican George Santos, who had been expelled from the House in a landmark action.

That puts the Republican “majority” in the House at 218-213. Four seats are vacant. The scant majority status puts almost every piece of legislation pitched by the GOP in peril.

Oh, wait! The GOP-led House is more interested in impeaching Democratic members of President Biden’s Cabinet on made-up phony charges than in doing anything constructive for the nation … such as enacting stronger border enforcement.

This is the body over which the SINO, Mike Johnson, presides.

Nice …

Missing the old GOP

Never in a million years would I imagine saying what I am about to say … which is that what passes for today’s Republican Party makes me miss many GOP politicians who once played by a different set of rules.

What we have now competing for votes against Democrats is a party full of craven sycophants, loyal to a twice-impeached, four-times indicted and possibly soon to be felony-convicted former president.

I must stipulate that I do not consider myself to be a loyal Democrat. I am an independent fellow who’s cast over many years plenty of votes for Republicans; none of them have gone to GOP presidential candidates since I began voting in 1972.

If some of the former Republican presidential nominees were running today against the presumed GOP frontrunner in 2024, I surely would consider casting a vote for them. Mitt Romney, John McCain, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush come to mind immediately.

These men were of high honor and integrity. They knew government, understood its many complexities and worked with Democrats frequently to solve national problems.

Of the men I mentioned, I came closest in 1976 to voting for President Ford, who was running for election after having assumed the presidency in a time of national crisis. He was never elected VPOTUS or POTUS, but was the right man at the time to restore honor to a government torn asunder by what was the worst constitutional crisis in history. His pardon of President Nixon a month into his term was a deal-breaker … as I recall it; I since have changed my mind.

I just miss the era when Republicans weren’t so frozen in their loyalty to a single politician that they could suspend their rigidity to work out compromise solutions. I believe truly that is one of the tenets of good government.

Today, though, we see a party held captive by a megalomaniac. Senate Republicans hammered out an immigration deal that would strength border security. The former POTUS didn’t want President Biden to get any credit for solving the crisis, so he put the arm on senators to get ’em to back away. They did and to their everlasting shame, the border deal died a quick and unexpected death.

And why? Because Republicans in the Senate — and the House — lack the guts to do the right thing in spite of what their hero suggests.

I miss the old Republican Party.

Any other kind?

Driving around North Texas as I do damn near daily, I see street corners and highway intersections festooned with campaign signs promoting candidates for this or that public office.

It’s election time, after all.

One mantra is part of almost all the signs I see crowing for the benefits of Republicans seeking election this year.

They call themselves, almost to a person, “conservative Republican.”

I am compelled to ask myself: Is there any other kind of Republican?

Suppose you happen to be a Republican who, say, is pro-choice on abortion. You believe a woman should be able to determine — with advice and counsel from her partner, her doctor, her clergy — whether she wants to carry a pregnancy to birth. Does that wipe away any other conservative views you might have on, say, taxation, or gun-owners’ rights or government spending? What about same-sex marriage or whether schools should be allowed to display the Ten Commandments?

In this day of political rigidity, any variation from every conservative tenet labels one, apparently, a “woke” liberal, a squishy progressive who secretly believes in socialist economic policy.

When I see these “conservative Republican” captions on campaign signs, I am left to presume the candidate also adheres to the MAGA dogma promoted by the most recent POTUS. My presumption, therefore, allows me to believe that to be a “conservative Republicans” means you endorse the idiocy preached by the former POTUS.

I recall when a Republican president, Richard Nixon, endorsed the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. Another Republican POTUS, George H.W. Bush, promoted the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in 1991. Still another Republican, President George W. Bush, invested more public money to fight HIV/AIDS than the rest of the world combined.

On the Democratic side, some of you might recall that U.S. Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson was a staunch supporter of the Vietnam War effort in the late 1960s. That didn’t make him less of a Democrat than any of his colleagues who opposed the war effort.

“Conservative Republican” these days looks for all the world to describe just about anyone willing to run on the GOP ticket for public office. In North Texas, the political playing field is swarming with them.

Cynicism runs deep in GOP

Republican cynicism runs deep and it is perverse … and it sickens me to my core.

U.S. had senators agreed on a $118 billion border security bill that includes aid to Ukraine and Israel. It also helps stiffen our southern border by providing more help to embattled states — such as Texas — in their effort to stem the tide of illegal immigrants crossing into this country.

Oh, but wait! The former POTUS opposed it. He pressured Republicans in the Senate to oppose it. And why? Because any legislation that aids in curing the crisis at the border helps President Biden’s re-election effort. And, why, we just cannot have that, or so Republicans would tell you.

So, The Former Guy put the heat on and GOP senators now have pulled their support for the legislation … after Republican Senate leaders helped craft the bill in the first place.

Cynicism, anyone? There it is, front and center for you to consider.

Joe Biden implored Senate Republicans to “show some spine” in rejecting the leading GOP presidential contender’s demands to oppose the bill. The gutless wonders comprising the Senate Republican caucus only knuckled under to the threats and bullying of their hero.

Never mind the effort that actually takes steps to solving what we all recognize is a crisis on our border. Or that it also contains money to aid the valiant fight against Russian aggression against Ukraine. Or that it also provides aid to our most reliable ally in the Middle East.

The MAGA crowd got its wish … again!

The cause of good government once again only received the middle finger from the right-wing cult.

Disgraceful …

Party is battling itself

What in the name of political gamesmanship is happening to the North Texas version of the Republican Party?

U.S. Rep. Keith Self of McKinney is running for re-election to a second term representing the 3rd Congressional District. Should be a walk in the ol’ park, right? Self, a West Point graduate, is a retired Army colonel, a former Collin County judge, he’s a conservative’s conservative, opposing almost every idea put forth by his Democratic colleagues.

He has endorsed the former POTUS’s bid to get his office back. Rep. Self voted enthusiastically for the impeachment inquiry launched against President Biden.

What more can today’s GOP ask?

I guess it’s not enough to be as right-wing as Keith Self has been since taking office in January 2023.

Suzanne Harp is challenging Self in the GOP primary set for March. She is running as an “America First Conservative.” Her campaign signs are sprouting all over Collin County like weeds in the spring.

I had a chance this week to ask a Keith Self staffer whether the congressman considers himself to be an America First Conservative. The staffer answered, “I believe so.”

This challenge to a staunchly conservative member of Congress exemplifies, in my view, the internecine battle that’s occurring within the Republican Party. As near as I can tell, Self is all in on supporting The Former Guy’s effort to regain power. So does Harp. Where, then, is the fundamental difference between them?

Keith Self campaigned in 2022 as a conservative. He has voted as one. He extols the (alleged) virtues of the former POTUS’s record and stands firmly behind him.

How does a modern Republican — in this MAGA era — campaign against someone cut from the mold that presented Keith Self to the voters of the Third Congressional District?

I have no particular interest in this contest, given my own views opposing the MAGA agenda. It just makes my head spin.