Tag Archives: GOP

national news, political news

Democrats playing with fire

I remain concerned, but not yet frightened, over the prospect of Democrats working overtly to help nominate MAGA-loving, election-denying, fruitcake Republicans to high public office.

It’s going on all across the country, with Democrats contributing actual cash money and casting actual votes for Republicans believing that nominating the weakest candidates guarantees a victory for Democrats this fall.

Not so fast, folks.

This is a game fraught with peril.

What in the world is going to happen if voters actually elect these election deniers to, say, governorships? There are individuals on some state ballots who promise to overturn the results of the 2024 presidential election if the “wrong” candidate wins. These are the folks Democrats are helping win their party’s nomination. Holy cow!

This kind of electoral tomfoolery can work. It also can backfire.

It’s the kind of act that makes me nervous.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, national news, political news, State news

Empower Texans: worst PAC ever

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Were you to ask me to rank the worst political action committee active today in Texas, I would have little difficulty identifying my public enemy No. 1.

That would be Empower Texans.

Empower Texans took form in West Texas, which arguably is the birthplace of the modern state Republican Party. It’s a conservative region governed essentially by conservative politicians. Empower Texans, though, sees as its mission to carry its arch-conservatism across the state.

The PAC routinely “primaries” Republican pols who don’t adhere to Empower Texans’ rigid view of the world. I’ve seen this PAC in action in the Panhandle region, where I lived and worked for more than two decades before relocating in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex; indeed, Empower Texans is busy here, too.

Empower Texans has a number of its preferred candidates on the ballot in 2022. Many of them will get elected. What they do once they get elected to Congress or to the Legislature remains to be seen. However, if they are faithful to Empower Texans’ creed, they will seek to undercut policies that many Texans favor, such as being pro-choice on abortion and favoring sensible legislative solutions to gun violence.

Those, in my view, are the two issues of the day that have drawn Empower Texans into the fight. This group needs to be stopped.

The PAC wants a total ban on abortion, and it opposes any legislation that it deems capable of “disarming law-abiding Texans.”

That, in short order, is why this is the worst PAC working in Texas.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news

Lawn sign: yes or no?

I am grappling with my current issue of the day: Do I put a lawn sign in my front yard proclaiming my political preferences for all the world to see?

I am inclined to avoid doing so. You see, we live in an era of meanness that borders on insanity.

The last lawn sign that I pounded into the dirt on my front yard had the name of the late Frank Church, the senator from Idaho who in 1976 ran for the Democratic nomination for president in the Oregon primary. That was the last year before I became a full-time journalist, which to my way of thinking meant that I couldn’t declare my political leaning in that fashion as long as I was reporting on political matters.

That was 46 years ago. I no longer am a full-time journalist, although I do write on a freelance basis for a public radio station website and for a weekly newspaper in Collin County, Texas. I don’t feel encumbered, necessarily, by those part-time jobs.

However, I am a bit fearful of putting a lawn sign out there for, say, Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat running for Texas governor, in the middle of what I will presume to be a neighborhood full of Republicans.

We know the next-door neighbors on both sides of us and we know a smattering of others across the street and farther away on our side of the street. I wouldn’t expect trouble from them.

It’s the total strangers who travel down our street during all hours of the day and night who give me the heebie-jeebies.

I also should declare that since I joined the roster of ink-stained wretches who write for newspapers I haven’t contributed a dime to any political cause, either. I do vote. I am adamant that I make my voice heard where it counts the most.

This lawn-sign thing is going to require a major leap of faith. I am unsure whether I want to take it just yet.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

business news, crime news, national news, political news

How can GOP tolerate this?

I guess I’ll just have to resign myself to never knowing the truth while I am alive and breathing.

The “truth” to which I refer happens to involve how a once-great political party can be at one time a champion for “family values” and proclaimed that “character matters” can align itself with a cult figure who embodies the exact opposite of both principles.

Republicans today are wedded to the rubbish uttered, muttered and sputtered by Donald John Trump.

The thrice-married former POTUS has admitted to cheating on his first two wives and then paid a porn star $130,000 to remain quiet about a tryst she said she and the future POTUS had back in the old days. Trump denies the event occurred … but he paid her the money to keep quiet about it. Go figure.

I guess I should mention that the alleged tumble with the porn queen occurred just weeks after Trump wife No. 3 gave birth to his youngest son.

We are being flooded with information about the FBI search for top-secret documents taken illegally from the White House and socked away in the basement of Trump’s home in Florida. Republican response to it? Crickets, man.

In a way, though, the silence is a bit of a change in what had been the typical GOP response to allegations leveled against the former Cult Leader in Chief. Members of Congress had been quick to blame Democrats for “weaponizing” the process that resulted in two impeachments of Trump. I am hearing little justification for a POTUS taking those documents that belong to the public and do not belong to him.

Meanwhile, GOP congressional leaders remain shamefully silent as evidence piles up along several legal fronts. In Georgia, we hear about a grand jury taking testimony about Trump coercing state election officials to “find” enough votes to swing that state’s 2020 presidential election results to Trump’s favor. Does anyone in the GOP care about that?

Trump’s business is being probed for allegedly falsifying its assets in order to obtain loans. Are those the ingredients of a character-driven business empire?

The House select 1/6 committee is trying to finish its probe into Trump’s role in inciting the insurrection that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Republicans don’t give a crap about that, either … except for the two GOP committee members, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

I do not understand what has happened to the Republican Party. I thought I might learn the answer before they threw me into the ground.

Silly me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, national news, political news

How do these candidates do it?

There can be nothing normal about today’s political climate, given what I understand is the amazingly strong showing among Republican candidates for high public office.

Bear in mind that these Republicans have been endorsed/anointed by Donald John Trump as heirs to the political idiocy to which he gave birth when he rode down the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 to announce his presidential candidacy.

For example, I just heard that dumb bell Herschel Walker is actually leading Sen. Raphael Warnock in the race in Georgia for Warnock’s seat in the Senate. The spread is just 3 percentage points, but the very idea that a dumbass like Walker can be taken seriously as a senatorial candidate simply blows my mind.

It’s neck and neck up yonder in Pennsylvania, where Trumpkin Mehmet Oz is running against Lt. Gov. John Fetterman for the GOP-held Senate seat that Pat Toomey is vacating. Oz doesn’t even live in Pennsylvania and has managed to make a hash out of damn near every issue there is to discuss. He’s still in the hunt.

Over in Ohio, another Trump cultist, J.D. Vance, is actually ahead of U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan in the race for the seat vacated by Sen. Bob Portman, one of the good-guy Republicans still in office.

These and other examples suggest to me that whatever political future Trump carves out for himself might be moot. He’s already won by leaving a large footprint on a once-Grand Old Party.

If he declines to run for POTUS in 2024, his candidates will carry the ball for him. If he decides to run and loses, he’ll still have that field of Trumpkins.

If he runs and wins … oh, jeez, I can’t finish that thought.

The 45th POTUS has endorsed a slate of losers, nut jobs and dumbasses. That much we know. What boggles my noggin is that some of them actually might win.

Go … figure.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news, local news, national news, State news

Nothing to brag about here, Texas

Well now, it turns out Texas is No. 1 in a category of states that should bring plenty of shame.

Texas has more Oath Keepers members than any other state in the Union. Who are the Oath Keepers? This is one of the groups involved in inciting the 1/6 insurrection against the government, the attack that sought to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election … the one that Donald Trump lost fair and square to Joe Biden.

Oh, but there’s more.

Among the more than 3,300 Texans listed as members of Oath Keepers, some of ’em are law enforcement officers. They include two constables and four chiefs of police.

The findings come from the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to rooting out evil among us. They have hit the mother lode when it comes to Texas’ involvement in the Oath Keepers, many of whom were photographed prancing through the Capitol on 1/6 carrying Confederate flags and shouting “Hang Mike Pence!”

Hey, you want more? Try this: One of the constables serves a precinct in Collin County, where I live with other members of my family. When I saw the Collin County connection to this far-right-wing group of fruitcakes, my thought turned immediately to a gentleman I have gotten to know — who happens to be a constable in Collin County.

My friend ain’t that guy. What’s more, you know of course that constables in Texas also happen to be elected politicians who run for the office either as Democrats or Republicans.

For the record, the Collin County constable associated with the Oath Keepers is Joe Wright, who serves Precinct 4. Constable Wright has some explaining to do to his constituents who might be concerned about this fellow’s link to an organization involved in one of the darkest days in U.S. history.

More than 3,300 Texans were members of the Oath Keepers, report says | The Texas Tribune

This is a strange turn that makes me decidedly not proud of the state where my wife and I chose to relocate more than 38 years ago.

I consider the Oath Keepers to be replete with traitors.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

What does he favor?

We elect our legislators to, um, legislate. Isn’t that the rule of thumb? Sure it is.

However, when I see U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s name, the junior Republican from Texas usually is telling us what he opposes. The guy cannot affix his name to any constructive legislation, which is why he pulls down that six-figure salary.

Cruz said today that he opposes legislation codifying same-sex marriage. He said it violates Americans’ religious freedom. I’m not sure I get it, but that’s what Cruz said.

Back to my point. Cruz won election to the Senate in 2012. He hasn’t distinguished himself as an author of legislation that benefits American lives. He continues to rail as a gadfly, raising hell and calling Democrats and sons and daughters of Satan.

That’s when he isn’t seeking to get away from doing his job, which is what happened when he sought a vacation in Cancun in February 2021 while Texas were freezing to death in the killer winter freeze.

Ted Cruz just pisses me off.

There. Now I feel better.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden, national news, national security, political news

Why the hysterical response?

Am I imagining it or is the right-wing cabal of alleged political thinkers acting as if the president of the United States might have hit ’em where they hurt?

President Biden took some national TV time the other evening to blame the “MAGA Republicans” who comprise a shrinking but still significant portion of a once-grand old party for stealing the “soul of the nation.” He also called them a threat to democracy because of their constant threats of violence and their insistence that the 2020 presidential election was the result of “widespread voter fraud.”

The right-wingers have fired back with both barrels. They accuse Biden of inciting division himself. They call him the worst president in history. They excoriate him for offending “half the country” that still supports Donald Trump; actually, it ain’t half, but instead is a significant — but dwindling — minority of Americans who still swallow the swill that Trump is serving.

The hysterical response suggests to me that President Biden has told ’em the truth. Or, as President “Give “em Hell Harry” Truman might say, “He told them the truth and they just think it’s hell.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Democrats get big gust of wind from the Arctic

Whoever in the world would have thought that Democrats — already feeling energized as the midterm election approaches — would get a big gust of wind in their sails … from the Arctic Circle?

Yep, that is where a Democratic candidate for Congress scored an upset over a one-time Republican darling, former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP’s 2008 nominee for vice president of the United States.

Mary Peltola will take her seat in the House, succeeding the late Don Young in the state’s only U.S. House seat. Palin was thought to be a shoo-in for the post. Then they counted the votes and it turns out that Peltola got more of them than the former Sarah Barracuda.

What’s most astonishing is that Peltola becomes the first Democrat to serve in the House from Alaska since the beginning of Alaska’s statehood. Alaska is as reliably Republican as any state in the Union.

And to be brutally candid, it’s good to see Palin knocked down a peg or three from her imagined towering perch.

Palin became a sort of caricature of herself over the years, with her assorted high-profile family issues erupting here and there. She quit the governorship halfway through her first and only term in office.

I’ve always thought of Palin as an empty vessel, someone with hardly an original idea in her noggin. That the late Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee in 2008, would choose her as his running mate turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes of McCain’s long and distinguished career in public service.

Peltola now must go through a general election campaign, having knocked Palin out of the race. May the new congresswoman serve her state well. I have this feeling she’ll do so with the dignity that Palin usually was unable to find.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Weaponization anyone?

Wait just a dadgum minute. Didn’t those Republican idiots who stood up for Donald Trump accuse Democrats of “weaponizing” the impeachment process during both of the impeachments that Trump endured?

Yeah, they did. What in the name of pure partisan politics is going on now with Republicans in the House saying they’re getting ready to impeach President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Vice President Harris — and perhaps even the White House chef, for all I know — if they seize control of the House after the midterm election?

What in the world would be the basis for any of this absolute horsesh**? Is it because, um, that Biden managed to pass legislation without GOP help in Congress? Or that Garland decided to issue a lawful search warrant to find documents that Trump pilfered from secure locations in the White House? Of that Harris cast tie-breaking votes when Republicans failed to join Democrats in enacting legislation designed to help Americans?

Or — what the hell? — maybe the White House chef cooked a souffle that deflated too early?

I don’t know. I do know that whenever I hear this nonsense coming from the GOP side of the great divide on Capitol Hill, it fills me with a modicum of hope that voters across the land might be able and willing to spare us all the nightmare that awaits if the GOP takes control of Congress.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com