Tag Archives: GOP

local news, political news

Trump gets support from CPAC … imagine that!

This is likely the biggest non-surprise of the current political season, but it’s still worth a comment or two.

It comes in the form of the endorsement of Donald J. Trump’s continuing presence on the political scene by the Conservative Action Political Conference, which met this past weekend in Dallas.

I cannot help but shake my noggin.

The CPAC faithful want Trump to run for president in 2024. They have decided, I reckon, to ignore the two impeachments during his term in office, the stunning pile of evidence that mounts from the House select committee’s probe into the 1/6 insurrection and perhaps the possible indictments for criminal activity that might come from the Justice Department.

Oh, and never mind that Trump has yet to lay any sort of agenda for the future. He continues to wallow in The Big Lie that he keeps alive by suggesting the 2020 election was stolen from him.

That’s leadership? That’s moving toward the future?

At CPAC, conservative Texans show Donald Trump loyalty | The Texas Tribune

The “conservative movement” has been hijacked, along with the Republican Party, by the cult of personality led by Donald J. Trump.

The Texas Tribune summed up nicely the theme of Trump’s keynote speech: Trump stuck to a familiar script and repeated the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even as those claims have repeatedly been debunked by even his own former aides. He painted cities run by Democratic leadership as hellscapes awash in crime and lamented what he described as an open southern border with Mexico.

The Texas crowd ate it up. “I’m over the moon, I’ve been trying to see him for years,” said Therese Boehnlein, who drove from Waco to Dallas to see Trump.

Well … OK. The ex-POTUS dropped a hint or two that he’ll run again in 2024. That will be his third attempt at the White House. Just remember something: He got fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016 and a lot fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020.

Truly astounding.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

environmental news, national news

Not even close …

This isn’t anything like the way I envisioned legislation would proceed upon the election in 2020 of Joe Biden as president of the United States.

I envisioned a return to the type of collegiality and compromise one could see with a president with decades of legislative experience working with members of Congress to enact laws that would do good things for Americans.

What have we seen? More gridlock. More obstruction from the loyal opposition. More partisan wrangling.

Democrats are cheering the enactment of what they call the Inflation Reduction Act. The Senate vote was 50-50, leaving the tie-breaking vote to come from Vice President Harris.

The bill isn’t perfect, but it includes the nation’s largest investment ever on ways to battle the planet’s changing climate. It seeks to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. It is paid for by taxes being leveled on corporations.

The Grand Obstructionist Party fought all of it. Tooth and nail. Hammer and tong.

President Biden’s predecessor took office without a lick of government experience … and it showed. He couldn’t negotiate his way out of a phone booth. Biden took office in January 2021 making what I thought at the time was a reasonable pledge to restore a sense of commonality between Democrats and Republicans.

Silly me. It hasn’t worked. GOP members of both congressional chambers continue to dig in, even to the point of denying that Joe Biden even is the “legitimate president of the United States.” Yes, they have swallowed The Big Lie and are obstructing the president at every turn.

But … Democrats won this latest battle. I am glad and grateful at least to see one side of the great divide working on my behalf.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Senate clears big bill

OK, so it doesn’t constitute a stunning bipartisan mandate, but it does demonstrate how Senate Republicans — once again — appear to be on the wrong side of history.

The U.S. Senate approved by the thinnest margin possible a procedural vote that clears the way for approval of a slimmed-down package that President Biden has been seeking to do a number of positive things for the economy.

The bill seeks to cut carbon emissions and help stem the changing climate; it seeks to pay for itself by raising taxes on the richest Americans; it seeks to lower drug costs, giving more Americans access to medication.

Harris breaks 50-50 deadlock to advance landmark climate, tax, health bill | The Hill

Hey, it’s a good package.

All 50 Senate Republicans voted “no.” All 50 Democrats voted “yes.” That left it to Vice President Harris to cast the deciding vote to send the measure on to a full vote sometime Sunday.

This is the same deal that was given up for dead when Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin declared he couldn’t support it. Then the senator met with Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer to work out a pared-down version. Manchin changed his tune; the deal was back on the table.

This gives President Biden a much-need push toward keeping a major campaign promise, which was to help reduce the threat caused by climate change.

As for the Republicans, they continue to push policies that Americans do not support. How can they sustain that stubbornness going into the midterm election?

My hope is that they cannot.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

RINO: misdirected term

It is an astonishing thing to watch and to hear as Republicans seek to hang RINO tags on fellow party members in this age of Trump as the former POTUS seeks to tighten his grip on a once great and grand old party.

Donald Trump’s hijacking of the party has turned it into a cult of personality in which actual long-standing and principled Republicans are being demonized because they, in so many cases, simply stand for the rule of law.

RINO, of course, is the acronym that stands for Republican In Name Only. What is baffling to me in the extreme is to hear so-called Republicans who — prior to Trump’s arrival in politics — had little to do with the party or with crafting policy positions on which the party ran for public office.

Donald Trump is one of them. In that context, he is the ultimate RINO, an empty vessel who becomes a champion of whatever cause someone tosses out there for him to scarf up.

Liz Cheney is seeking re-election to her House seat in Wyoming. She has been censured and cast out of her state’s GOP. Why? Because she had the temerity to criticize Trump for inciting the insurrection of 1/6 and for refusing to adhere to the long-standing tradition of handing over power to the man who beat him in the most recent presidential election.

And yet she is as a Republican as they come. Her record is replete with votes in favor of gun ownership, against abortion, in favor of lower taxes, favoring a strong military.

You get the idea, right? Her Republican credentials cannot possibly measure up to the standard that the Trump Cabal of Cultists have set. You have to be loyal to the former POTUS, or else you’re out!

It is truly astounding.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

Where’s the compassion … doc?

It never ceases to amaze how the man who claims to represent the Texas Panhandle in Congress — the Dipsh** Doc, if you will — can exhibit so little common decency when it involves the commander in chief.

Ronny Jackson, the Republican who once, served as White House physician for Donald Trump and Barack Obama — keeps tweeting the idiotic messages calling attention to President Biden’s struggle to get past the COVID-19 infection that continues to register on his test results.

And yet … there is no expression of concern or of any good wishes for the president’s complete recovery from the ailment. It ain’t coming from Jackson, who continues to enrage many of us out here with assertions about the president’s mental acuity … which is absolute rubbish.

I must remind Jackson and other GOP critics that Joe Biden sent Donald and Melania Trump wishes for a speedy recovery when they contracted the virus.

Any reciprocity from the other side? Hah!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

CPAC paints us as ‘enemy’

There they go again. The Conservative Political Action Conference, holding its annual meeting down the highway from me in Dallas, is labeling those of us who oppose its right-wing agenda as “the enemy within.”

Good grief, man! The particular epithet came from U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, the Florida loony bin Republican, who says all liberals are “socialists” who want the entire country to march in lockstep with their agenda … or else!

I don’t know what the “or else” is, other than to presume that it must involve some form of punishment.

Hey, but here’s the really bad news: Donald J. Trump is going to soil the CPAC stage on Saturday. Oh, he’ll feed the attendees more Big Lie crapola. He might drop another hint or two about whether he intends to run for POTUS in 2024.

He might … if he isn’t under felony indictment by the Justice Department for conspiring to commit sedition after the 2020 presidential election — which Trump lost!

Yep, in the CPAC world of Us vs. Them, those who hold different views are the “enemy within.”

Sickening.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Good news, sort of, surfaces

There’s a bit of good news to report from the latest round of midterm primary election results, some of which haven’t yet been declared official by various states.

It is that a number of the certifiable nut cases endorsed by Donald J. Trump have either won their Republican primary contests or are leading them with just a smattering of votes left to be counted.

Why is that good news? Why would this blogger see their seeming victories be a sign of better days?

It is because the Trumpkin wing of the GOP has clamped a stranglehold on the party. However, there exists a growing — at least I hope it is growing — pool of voters who have had it up to here with Trump’s constant yammering about The Big Lie.

The former POTUS’s cultists have glommed onto The Big Lie and are suggesting they’re going to get some payback if they manage to win the election this November against whomever they’ll face from the Democratic Party.

Democrats should — if they’re smart and have hired capable campaign staff — be able to paste the nut case label on the foreheads of their Trump cult opponents. That would be my hope.

It continues to astound me that so many Republican voters continue to insist that Trump truly was robbed of his “landslide” victory in the 2020 election by “widespread voter fraud.” The only electoral theft occurring comes from the GOP, led by its titular leader and his effort to overturn the results of the election.

But wait! Attorney General Merrick Garland well could have a whole lot to say about that effort and whether the former president has broken the law in egging on the mob of traitors who stormed the Capitol Building on 1/6.

My view? He damn sure did break the law! He needs to be prosecuted … but that’s just me.

If he is indicted and Merrick Garland can make the indictments stick, then the Trumpkins who have won their primary contests will have reached the end of their political journey.

There’s more good news!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Can’t we do better?

Surely you remember the time when we expected a lot more than usual from those we elect to represent our interests in, say, Congress.

I certainly do remember.

Today, we can scan the political horizon and find any number of nimrods, dipsh**s, fruitcakes and borderline psychos serving a the highest levels of government.

Since the Republican Party supposedly is on the ascent, I feel compelled to single out just a few GOP officeholders to make my point.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida is being investigated for having sex with underage girls; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia says the Constitution doesn’t really separate church and state; Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado has declared that this is a Christian nation; closer to home, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been under felony indictment on securities fraud charges and is favored to win re-election to a third term as the state’s top law enforcement officer.

I just have to mention, if only briefly, that we elected a president of the United States who admits to sexually assaulting women, who says he’s never sought forgiveness for mistakes he has made, who has admitted to cheating on all three women he has married, who once said he “could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and never lose any voters.”

Politics is supposed to be a noble profession. These days it is being practiced by run-of-the-mill nut jobs.

Scary, man.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Trumpkins may save Democrats

I will get right to the point. Senate Democratic candidates might have an easier time winning their midterm election contests than originally thought.

Their secret weapon? It well might be the quality of their Republican Party opponents.

Democrat Tim Ryan is facing off against a GOP foe endorsed by Donald Trump. J.D. Vance is digging himself into a deeper hole almost daily with his goofy pronouncements; the men are competing for an Ohio U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Rob Portman.

John Fetterman is running against Mehmet Oz for the U.S. Senate seat that Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey is leaving behind. Oz is another Trumpkin. Fetterman is making a whole lot of hay over the fact that Oz doesn’t live in Pennsylvania. He is making wise use of social media to whittle away at Oz.

Sen. Raphael Warnock is a Democrat seeking re-election to his office. His GOP challenger, another Trumpkin, is Herschel Walker, whom I have dubbed the No. 1 dumbass of the 2022 midterm election.

These are three notable examples. It might be — and I won’t predict it — that Democrats can perhaps gain a bit of an advantage over the GOP in the Senate races this year.

The goofballs anointed by Donald J. Trump give me reason to smile.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

GOP might rescue Democrats

There can be no greater political irony imaginable than to think that Democrats’ greatest ally in the midterm competition against Republicans might be … Republicans!

The GOP was poised to grab control of both congressional chambers once we count the ballots of the midterm election. Then something odd happened: the godfather of current GOP, Donald Trump, began endorsing certifiable nut jobs for high office.

A.B. Stoddard, writing for RealClearPolitics, reports: Republicans are now panicked that what was once a dream election year could end up a nightmare. A recent report in Axios described GOP anxiety this way: “Top Republicans, once confident about winning control of the Senate in the midterms, fear they’ll blow it after nominating several deeply flawed candidates in winnable states, according to conversations with GOP strategists, pollsters and other officials.” The Senate candidates they are most worried about are Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Herschel Walker in Georgia, J.D. Vance in Ohio, Blake Masters in Arizona, and Eric Greitens in Missouri.

Oz, Vance, Greitens and Masters are seeking to keep Senate seats in Republican control. They all are trailing their Democratic foes. Walker is challenging a Democratic incumbent in Georgia and he, too, is trailing Sen. Raphael Warnock.

Trump’s recommendations haven’t exactly helped most of his endorsees. Many of the MAGA-friendly candidates are downright frightening. Herschel Walker comes to mind.

Will Trump and MAGA Candidates Slow the Red Wave? | RealClearPolitics

The so-called Red Wave well might swamp the House of Representatives. The Senate is looking like there might be an altogether different outcome than what many of us had expected.

If the GOP falls short, I believe they should look inward and ask: Can we do better than line up behind the lawlessness promoted by a twice-impeached POTUS?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com