Tag Archives: GOP

crime news

Buckle up and wait for these results

There likely will be no clearer referendum on the health and status of today’s Republican Party than a primary vote set to take place next month in Wyoming.

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, the state’s lone representative in the House, is running for re-election. She has been as staunch a conservative lawmaker as any in the House. She is fervently pro-life and pro-gun; she is anti-tax and has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

But she’s being called a “dead woman walking” in the upcoming GOP primary because she is being challenged by a Trump cultist who has earned the endorsement of the twice-impeached former president.

Why worry about this election? Because Cheney has committed an unpardonable sin in the eyes of the cult cabal that follows Donald Trump. She has joined a select House committee seeking to know the truth behind the 1/6 insurrection and attack on the Capitol. She has said Trump is criminally liable for what occurred that day. She has been faithful to her oath, which she took to defend the Constitution.

That has earned her a spot on the Donald Trump sh** list of politicians who would dare to challenge him for, oh, breaking the law and doing something no other president in history has ever done … which is launch a coordinated attack on the peaceful transition of power after an election that he lost.

If the Wyoming primary voters oust Cheney, then I am certain it will signal the death of the Republican Party as we have known it. If Cheney fends off the challenger, which appears unlikely, then there might be hope that the GOP can cleanse itself of the soiling that Trump has brought to it.

I am pulling for Rep. Cheney. Not because I like her politics, but because the Republican Party needs someone in its ranks who will stand for the rule of law. It is fundamental to the success of this democratic experiment the nation’s founders left us.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Biden update: Stay the course, Mr. POTUS

Joe Biden is feeling lots of heat these days from the far left as well as from the far right. The right-wingers’ criticism is to be expected. The lefties, though, present a unique concern for the president of the United States.

I am insisting, thus, that President Biden continue on a path toward finding common ground with both ends of the spectrum. It is how he has been wired since he hopped onto the national stage after winning the 1972 election to the U.S. Senate.

Biden has been on — or near that stage — for the past 50 years.

Am I concerned about falling approval ratings? Sure. Who wouldn’t be? The RealClearPolitics poll average puts the president’s approval rating at around 39%. Don’t remind me how bad that looks compared to what other presidents have experienced. I get it … totally!

Even though I won’t blame the president for all the issues that are dragging his poll numbers down, I certainly understand the need for the head of state and government and our commander in chief to get more aggressive in his use of the bully pulpit.

I remain a good-government progressive, which is how I describe a politician willing to compromise to achieve legislative success. Joe Biden has shown an ability to do such a thing over his many years in public service.

Yes, he is going to face pressure from the progressive wing of his own party and from the obstructionist wing of the Republican Party.

Stay the course, Mr. President.

johnkanelis_9@hotmail.com

national news

Pure nonsense!

1 Comment

All righty, this seems to make a point better than I could ever make it about whether Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Georgia, is a certifiable dumbass.

I want to challenge anyone out there to parse this piece of verbal dooky and report back to me.

What in the hell is this idiot saying?

Let’s remember that this former football star who has earned the “full and complete endorsement” of Donald J. Trump wants to join a legislative chamber that once proclaimed itself to be the world’s “greatest deliberative body.”

This guy deserves to enter the Senate chamber? Not … a … chance!

I might be inclined to pay real American money to watch this guy debate the man he wants to defeat, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.

Meantime, someone please tell me what Walker said.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

‘Mitt’ becomes latest GOP four-letter word

I never thought this day would come, when members of the Republican Party – those who have swilled the snake oil peddled by a fraud – would turn on one of the party’s truest believers and use his name as a cudgel to beat their opponents bloody.

They would call them “Mitt Romney Republicans.”

Believe this or not, but the Donald Trump cultists are now using Sen. Mitt Romney’s name as an epithet. Yeah, that Mitt Romney, the junior senator from Utah, the 2012 GOP nominee for president who came quite close to defeating President Obama, the fellow who saved the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and the son of a successful governor of Michigan.

How in the world did Mitt earn the title of becoming a four-letter word in today’s GOP politics?

He voted to convict Donald Trump during the two impeachment trials that Trump faced during his term in office. That’s it! He sided with the rule of law on both occasions. He delivered an impassioned and emotional floor speech in the Senate prior to announcing his decision to vote to convict Trump during the initial impeachment trial, which came after the House impeached Trump for soliciting a political favor from the president of Ukraine in that so-called “perfect phone call.”

Mitt became the sole Republican senator in that first trial to seek a conviction. The second impeachment trial – caused by Trump’s inciting of the 1/6 insurrection – saw nine more GOP senators join Mitt Romney in voting to convict Trump.

All of this speaks so badly of a once-great political party, that its rabid followers of the ex-Narcissist in Chief would stoop so low as to label a one-time ideal Republican politician a pariah and a man worthy of political scorn among his fellow conservatives.

Hey, I didn’t vote for Sen. Romney when he ran against President Obama in 2012. However, my respect for him only has grown as he has remained loyal – along with a few of his GOP congressional colleagues – to the oath they took when they began their terms. It was an oath to protect the Constitution and to follow the law.

What in the name of fealty to the founders’ intent is wrong with that? Someone has to explain it to me.

Johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Sanity must prevail

Those of us who believe the world is full of far more sane people than insane individuals must cling to that notion tightly as we watch the 2024 presidential election field take shape.

Thus, it falls on me to declare once again that I believe sanity is going to win the day. Republicans are not going to commit an act of insanity by allowing a twice-impeached president, a two-time loser of the popular vote and an individual who well might be indicted for seditious conspiracy against the government to carry the party’s banner into the next presidential campaign.

Donald J. Trump cannot possibly believe he can be elected again to the nation’s highest office. Surely there exists a sufficient body of sane Republicans who also can prevent that catastrophe from occurring.

I say this because I have stated already that I do not believe that Trump is going to run for POTUS in two years. This individual has a sh**load of trouble awaiting him.

His business is failing.  He is in debt up to that muskrat-covered skull of his. The 1/6 insurrection probe has revealed to the world that Trump knew in advance that the attack he provoked would bring trouble and that he didn’t give a damn that the traitorous mob was screaming “Hang Mike Pence!” as they stormed the Capitol Building.

I will not believe that Republicans would dare nominate someone so corrupt, crooked, immoral and indecent as the guy who stumbled and bumbled his way into office, only to be revealed that he, indeed, is every inch the “phony” and the “fraud” that 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney described him.

My eternal hope still burns brightly with the belief that the world has more sane minds than insane minds.

Let it be so.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Why seek pardons?

Let’s call ’em the Six Musketeers. What do they have in common, other than being Republican members of Congress?

They asked their one-time cult leader/guru/top-shelf liar in chief for a blanket pardon before he left office.

This begs a serious question. Why would a member of Congress seek a presidential pardon if they were damn sure they were innocent of any crimes related to the 1/6 insurrection that occurred two weeks before Donald Trump vacated the White House?

Hmm. Well, you know their names. Here they are anyway.

Louis Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Scott Perry. 

Their names surfaced during this past week’s televised hearing of the 1/6 House select committee that is examining the issues that led to the attack on our nation’s Capitol Building … when Congress was convened to count Electoral College votes and then certify the election of President Biden.

These six clowns — two of whom, Gohmert of Texas and Brooks of Alabama, are leaving Congress at the end of the year — all allegedly engaged in some of the law-breaking committed by The Donald in his quest to remain in power. Except they deny doing anything wrong. Really?

My favorite among them is Greene, who had just been elected to her Georgia congressional seat in November 2020. My goodness, she had just taken her oath of office three days before the insurrection. So it took her no time at all to sink herself up to her armpits in the sleaze being peddled by Trump and the rest of his Corps of Cultists … allegedly.

This is the clown show that the cult followers insist we return to power in Washington, D.C. It is instead an act that needs to be run out of town.

The House select committee is going to resume its hearings soon after doing some more sleuthing around for more evidence to deliver us in a final report. Maybe it can uncover some more crooks who sought pre-emptive pardons for crimes they say they didn’t commit.

What a load of crap!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Political perversion at its worst

The political perversion that is underway within what passes for the Republican Party cannot be illustrated more plainly than what well might happen to one of the party’s stalwarts in an upcoming GOP primary election.

Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming stands front and center among Republicans in her opposition to the lawlessness demonstrated by Donald J. Trump — particularly during the final weeks of his administration as POTUS.

Because of her fealty to the Constitution and the oath she took to protect and defend it, Cheney is facing the wrath of the Trumpkins who populate her party in Wyoming. She is running for re-election this year and has drawn stiff opposition within her party; Trump has endorsed one of Cheney’s rivals. Why? Because she believes in the rule of law and believes that Trump has violated that tenet by his re-telling of The Big Lie about why he lost the 2020 presidential election.

Cheney is as stalwart a conservative Republican as anyone in the House of Representatives. None of that matters to the Trumpkins who have censured her and effectively declared her to be persona non grata within the Wyoming GOP.

That’s because she refuses to profess her loyalty to Donald Trump.

This is a shameful perversion of principle and of the oath all members of Congress take when they enter the People’s House.

I am not going to predict that Cheney will lose her primary fight when the balloting occurs in Wyoming. I’ve seen the various polls and will admit that it doesn’t look good for her future.

I also must stipulate once more that she is not my favorite Republican serving in Congress. She is too conservative for my taste, which illustrates why these attacks on her anger me so much.

I guess, therefore, the political perversion is complete when a member of Congress with whom I have fundamental philosophical disagreements can win my support on the basis of her rage at a president who embodies all that is wrong with today’s Republican Party.

Go figure.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

All together now: No secession for Texas!

Let’s all say this together, shall we? Texas cannot — under the law — secede from the United States of America!

Texas tried that once. It didn’t work out. We joined several other southern states to go to war with the United States because slave owners wanted to maintain the right to own fellow human beings as property. The Civil War came to an end in April 1865 and Congress wrote a law that prohibited secession. Period, man!

That didn’t dissuade the Texas Republican Party, though, from delivering a resolution at the end of its conference in Houston this past weekend that calls for a statewide referendum aimed at “achieving Texas independence.”

I have declared already that the Texas GOP has gone ’round the bend. This resolution only strengthens my argument.

The secession argument keeps rearing its disgusting head whenever right-wingers get pi**ed off about something, or anything! They want to remove the state from the clutches of federal control, believing foolishly that the state can solve its own problems.

“It is now time that the People of Texas are allowed the right to decide their own future,” state Rep. Kyle Biedermann, R-Fredericksburg, said in a statement announcing the resolution at the GOP conference.

The Texas Tribune reports: “The legality of seceding is problematic,” Eric McDaniel, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Texas Tribune in 2016. “The Civil War played a very big role in establishing the power of the federal government and cementing that the federal government has the final say in these issues.”

Texas can’t secede from the U.S. Here’s why. | The Texas Tribune

Yeah, a “very big role,” indeed.

The Confederacy committed the ultimate act of treason in declaring war on the U.S. government. The Civil War cost the nation more than 600,000 lives in the bloodiest conflict in its history.

President Lincoln’s second inaugural speech in March 1865 — a month before he would be assassinated — declared his intention to heal the wounds that ripped the nation apart. “With malice toward none and charity for all,” he said, the nation must move forward together.

Now we hear from the lunatics of Abraham Lincoln’s own Republican Party wanting to secede once again. Why? Because they don’t want the feds setting the rules all Americans must follow.

Do you see what I mean, therefore, about how nuts today’s Republican Party has become?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Uncategorized

Pulling for Democrats

I cannot hide my partisan leanings, so I won’t even try to pretend I am so politically neutral that I don’t care which political party wins control of policy making in my state.

Truth is, I do care. I am tired of Republican Party vise-grip control of policy in Texas. I might not mind so much about whether the GOP maintains control of state government, except that today’s Republican Party bears practically no resemblance to the party of the late former Gov. Bill Clements and the late U.S. Sen. John Tower.

Clements and Tower personified what has been called “establishment Republicanism.” These days, establishment GOP pols have become targets of epithets hurled at them by the MAGA crowd of cultists who adhere to the phony populism of Donald J. Trump. MAGA fanatics call these real Republicans, RINOs … Republicans in Name Only.

Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton are three amigos in pushing forward the MAGA agenda that seeks ostensibly to “make America great again.’

Earth to MAGA cultists: The MAGA mantra means nothing to me. America is great. It has been a great nation for far longer than I arrived on this good Earth.

The race for Texas governor is drawing a good bit of national attention. Democrat Beto O’Rourke is making his second run for statewide office in the past four years. He came close to defeating Ted Cruz in the 2018 race for U.S. Senate. Then he ran for president in 2020 and flamed out. Now he’s up once more … it might be his final run for statewide office.

I want Beto O’Rourke to defeat Gov. Abbott, who has been a terrible disappointment to me as the state’s chief executive.

Furthermore, I want to declare that my weariness of Republican Party dominance of public policy is no invitation for Democrats to veer too far off the mainstream middle ground that demands that many Texans are demanding to have their concerns heard, too.

It’s clear to me that Republicans aren’t listening to the vast middle ground. I consider myself to be a good-government progressive, which I believe requires plenty of compromise to find common ground.

Thus, we have an election coming up that could swing the state significantly away from the nastiness we see too often from Republican political leaders. May it come true.

Johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

State news

Cruz: loathsome to the max

There is no way for me to deny what I have believed firmly since the day Ted Cruz took office in 2013 as a U.S. Republican senator representing my family and me in Texas.

It is that he is the most loathsome politician I can think of this side of, say, Donald John Trump.

Cruz continues to make gurgling noises about wanting to run for president in 2024. He tried it once already, in 2016, He remained the last man standing in a crowded field that eventually succumbed to the cult following that gathered around Trump.

He once called Trump a “sniveling coward.” He then climbed aboard the Trump hay wagon, where he’s been sitting ever since.

The latest capper — gosh, there have been so many low points in this clown’s Senate career — is still unfolding. The lunatic shot up Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. He killed 19 precious children and two of their teachers. President Biden is trying to rally a grief-stricken nation to “do something” about gun violence.

Cruz’s response? He bloviates that the “radical Democrats” are seeking to “disarm Americans.” Oh, and then the rat boasts about his visit to Uvalde “the day after the shooting.” Big … deal!

The moron has zero public standing with me on that one, given how he hightailed it out of Texas in February 2021 while Texans were freezing to death in that horrific winter blast. Where was Ted? Basking in the sun with his family in Cancun!

I am sick and tired of this clown masquerading as a responsible public official when he is nothing more than a self-serving frontrunner seeking to further his own agenda.

Someone will have to show me a single piece of meaningful legislation with Cancun Ted’s name on it. Anyone?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com