State news

Hegar joins border fight

Give me a break, Glenn Hegar. The state’s chief bean counter has now entered the fight to “protect our border” against criminals and assorted bad actors.

Yep, that’s right. Glenn Hegar is seeking re-election as Texas comptroller of public accounts. So, what — and who — does the Republican incumbent target? President Biden, who he says has allowed the border to get out of control.

I saw Hegar’s TV ad for the first time this evening. I practically fell out of my chair!

Wait a second! Hegar’s office is responsible for telling the Legislature how much it has on hand to appropriate every odd-numbered year when lawmakers gather in legislative session.

He is the state’s top accountant, for cryin’ out loud! What is he doing now trying to inject himself into the border fight?

Let’s see, I think I know. Glenn Hegar has joined the GOP demagoguery brigade. I would laugh out loud … except that it just isn’t funny.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

environmental news, local news

Getting ready for worst

As I write this blog post, I am sitting in my North Texas home prepared for the worst from the latest winter storm to roll in over us.

To be clear, it’s not that I expect the worst. It’s just that after what we endured a year ago when millions of Texans froze in the dark during zero-degree winter blasts, no one I am aware of is taking any chances this year.

A member of our family told us this morning she ventured to the grocery store to buy some food and found the shelves “terribly picked over.” Seems that others in her neighborhood had the same thought. Oh, by the way, she said she and her family are well-stocked and ready for what is coming.

The Texas Tribune reports: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the grid, issued a winter storm watch through Sunday, saying it expects high energy demand through the duration of the cold front. But even with sleet, snow and ice predicted for a large swath of the state, ERCOT says it has sufficient power generation to meet the anticipated demand.

What a Texas winter storm means for the power grid | The Texas Tribune

The weather forecasters and the TV news presenters over the past couple of days have spoken to viewers with a twinge of frantic urgency in their voices. The blast that is rolling in isn’t as dramatic as what we endured a year ago, but our experience from February 2021 is too fresh in our memories for us to take it too lightly.

My wife has sheltered some of her treasured plants around the front of our house; she has filled several containers with fresh water; we’ve secured some candles; oh, and Toby the Puppy is going nowhere outside unless he insists that he has to relieve himself (he’ll let us know).

We didn’t suffer nearly the misery that many other Texans endured a year ago. Our lights were out for a few hours; we lost water for a little more than a day. Yes, there were those who suffered through several dark and waterless days in 2021. Still, we are prepared for the worst of this next winter blast.

We are going to hope for the best. We might even offer a prayer.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Sports news

Washington Commanders?

2 Comments

OK, here comes a question that might have crossed others’ minds as well as my own.

The Washington football team is now the Washington Commanders. It’s a fine name. I won’t quibble over it. What about any references to the team’s former name, such as when they played in previous Super Bowls?

For the record, I am glad the team ditched its former name, which I consider to be an epithet aimed at Native Americans. I won’t even use it here, just to be politically correct.

However, all references I have seen to Washington’s past football exploits in the Super Bowl, where it made five appearances dating back to the 1973 game against the Miami Dolphins, uses the franchise’s former name.

Will sportscasters, therefore, be allowed to use that name when talking about the team’s past? Or must they dance around it the way I am doing it now?

Just askin’.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

Storm makes me nervous

I cannot possibly be the only Texas resident who is suffering the nervous jerks as we await the arrival of this winter storm.

We went through a damn rough period just about a year ago in these parts when the electrical power grid failed. We lost our water supply for a time, too. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the managers of our grid, came under intense criticism over the power failure; so did the Public Utility Commission of Texas. ERCOT’s management team quit or was fired, along with the entire PUC.

Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to fix the grid. I am not sure it’s been fixed. Neither is anyone else. Abbott said a few weeks ago that “I guarantee the lights will stay on” this winter. Just this week, he walked back that bold assertion; now he said there is no guarantee possible.

So, yes, I am nervous about the storm that is sweeping into Texas this week. The weather forecasters tell us it won’t be as nasty and as severe as it was this past winter.

I do hope they’re right.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot, national news

The plot thickens

As if the plot wasn’t thick enough when Donald John Trump incited the traitorous mob to storm the Capitol Building on 1/6, seeking to stop the certification of a free and fair presidential election.

Oh, no. Now it’s getting even more serious than that.

Now we hear reports that Donald Trump was actively involved in plotting to seize voting machines in states that Joe Biden won in 2020. And do what with them? Manipulate them to reverse the outcome? To “find votes” that had been cast for the other guy and turn them into votes for his own need?

Oh, and then come Trump’s own words at that rally down yonder in Conroe over the weekend where he actually admitted to seeking to “overturn” the election result.

How much more of this do we need to start issuing felony criminal indictments against the former — and I hope never again — president of the United States of America?

I know the judicial process needs to play out. Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis is going to seat a special grand jury to examine whether Trump broke state election law by demanding that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “find” 11,780 votes that Trump could tack onto his own total in a state that Joe Biden won in 2020. Where I come from, that sounds all the world like coercion. Is it a criminal act? DA Willis will tell us in due course.

Trump keeps presenting all these serious danger signals that suggest if given the chance, he would do all over again what he tried to do at the very of his term as president. Now comes reporting that he tried to a whole lot more than has been reported already, that he sought to in effect seize control of the ballot-counting process. Arrrgghhh!

What in the name of democracy is it going to take for this country to put this clown down for the count? Do not put words in my mouth here. I am talking only about removing this imbecile from our public conscience. The system, whether it’s Congress or the courts, needs to expedite the search for findings that will answer all the questions that we have regarding the insurrection of 1/6.

If it means rounding up the one-time Insurrectionist in Chief, then so be it. Get it done! Quickly!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Cruz embarrasses me

(Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Ted Cruz just continues to pi**me off. I mean, the guy just cannot say a single, solitary sentence without sticking both of his boots squarely into his pie hole.

The junior U.S. senator from Texas, a Republican (naturally), said that President Biden’s decision to look only for a black woman to nominate for the Supreme Court “insults” other black Americans and also insults the senator.

He just cannot fathom that Biden wants to put someone on the court who embodies a greater swath of the American public. So he has chosen to look for an African American woman to fill that slot.

Cruz’s response seems to presume that Biden won’t find a qualified candidate to sit on the nation’s highest court.

I am wondering, as are others of my ilk: Why didn’t Cruz feel “insulted” when Donald Trump made the same pledge after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Didn’t the then-president say he would look for a woman to replace the iconic liberal justice?

Give me a break … Ted! Let the process play out and let the president make his decision. I am one of the senator’s constituents who wishes the junior GOP loudmouth would pipe down and stop pre-judging these matters.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

Danger lies ahead!

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

Dean Obeidallah has it exactly right: Donald J. Trump poses a serious threat to this nation any time he opens his mouth and says the things such as what he said this past weekend in Texas.

Obeidallah, writing for CNN.com, writes:

During the rally, Trump claimed that those who have been charged in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol are being “treated so unfairly,” and stunningly suggested that some might deserve pardons. “If I run and if I win,” Trump told the crowd of thousands, “we will treat those people from January 6 fairly … And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons.” But more alarming than that was Trump urging his supporters to engage in “the biggest protests we have ever had” if the prosecutors investigating him and his financial dealings “do anything wrong or illegal.”

Opinion: Trump’s rally in Texas shows exactly why he’s so dangerous – CNN

Americans and the entire world have seen what can happen when the twice-impeached ex-president exhorts the faithful to commit harm. They stormed the Capitol Building on 1/6 and, well, you know what happened on that terrible day.

Now he intends to lead a second attack on our national government? Is that what this moron is saying?

We likely should just ignore the blathering that comes from this guy. Except that his trash-talk is so damn dangerous.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Honest Abe: unelectable

This is the face of an unelectable politician and, no, it is not because he isn’t particularly “telegenic.” It is because his ideas within his beloved Republican Party have become grist for the trash heap.

Consider the very notion that the man I consider to be our nation’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, is no longer the voice and face of a party that once called itself “The Party of Lincoln.” President Lincoln held the nation together during its darkest period, during the time when Americans fought each other over slavery and that thing one side referred to as “states’ rights.”

Then, as the Civil War drew to a close and as President Lincoln delivered his second inaugural speech after winning re-election in 1864, he said he would bind the wounds that divided us, that he would proceed with “malice toward none and charity for all.” An assassin struck a month later and denied the president the chance to deliver on his promise.

The party under which he ran for president twice has become something the president wouldn’t recognize. He certainly would not condone the tone it has taken in recent years. It has been hijacked and twisted into a form that bears no resemblance to the party of the so-called “big tent.”

Donald John Trump’s control over the party starting with the 2016 GOP presidential primary campaign has taken it on a destructive course. It’s not that the party is destroying itself. It is that the ideas it promotes has gained new followers who are wedded to the hideous notions espoused by its leader.

The Grand Old Party has become a cult whose followers are infiltrating the ranks of candidates throughout Congress and into statehouses, county courthouses and even into ostensibly non-partisan city halls and school board meeting rooms.

Imagine a Republican with the chops of Abraham Lincoln seeking public office today. Imagine how the 16th president himself would fare were he to become a candidate.

Abraham Lincoln likely couldn’t be elected as a Republican because his party would lack the good sense to nominate him in the first place. The future of civil discourse and debate in this country deserves better than what lies ahead.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

Trump ‘unfit for office’

Jeez, do ya think? The White House press secretary today declared that Donald John Trump is unfit for office — I’ll presume any public office, not just the presidency — after he declared he might pardon the traitors who stormed the Capitol Building on 1/6 if by some hideous fluke he returns to the presidency.

So it was that press flack Jen Psaki today called out the ex-POTUS for his outrageous comment delivered at a rally in Texas.

“It’s just a reminder of how unfit he is for office,” Psaki said of Trump’s comments. “It’s telling that even some of his closest allies have rejected those remarks as inappropriate in the days since.”

How in the name of all that is sacred and holy can anyone condone the actions of those who committed that hideous attack on our democratic process? Yet that is what Trump is doing by suggesting that the defendants are being treated “unfairly.” Unfairly? What the hell?

This man continues to ratchet up the danger he poses to our democratic system of government with every lunatic utterance that spews from his foul mouth.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Paxton targets Gohmert?

Ken Paxton must be feeling the heat from the Looney Tunes wing of the Texas Republican Party, aka Paxton’s “base” of support. Why? Because he reportedly is taking out ads attacking Rep. Louie Gohmert, one of three GOP challengers to the AG in this year’s primary.

The attorney general and the East Texas congressman figure to carve up the radical right-wing voters of the GOP while they battle for Paxton’s office. Paxton reportedly has taken out some ads that are going after Gohmert.

To be brutally candid, I don’t give a damn about either of these guys, other than I want Paxton removed from the AG’s office. He is an embarrassment to the state I call home and I want him gone from public life. He has been under indictment for felony security fraud almost since the time he took office in 2015; he has yet to go to trial. He’s also angered some of his top legal assistants, who have quit and blown the whistle on what they allege is illegal activity within the AG’s office; the FBI is investigating the allegations.

He has two other serious challengers: former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman and Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush.

Polling shows Paxton continuing to run fairly strong among the four candidates, a thought that makes my blood boil. Gohmert, though, figures to peel away enough of the goofball vote to possibly force a runoff between the top two finishers in the primary.

My idea of a political perfection includes a scenario in which the top two do not include Paxton. That ain’t likely to happen. If only …

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience