Tag Archives: GOP

local news

When will denigration stop?

I cannot help but wonder how a member of Congress can continually denigrate the president of the United States, suggesting the president is mentally unfit for high office and then possibly expect that president to respond to a request — were it to come from the congressman — for help in any fashion.

U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson is a freshman Republican member of the House from the Texas Panhandle. Ever since taking office after winning election in 2020, Jackson has been on a constant Twitter harangue over President Biden’s occasional verbal stumbles.

He doesn’t refer to Joe Biden as “President” Biden. He continually harps on what I believe is a red-herring argument that the POTUS would fail a cognitive test.

Jackson recently declared that the nation needs Donald Trump “more than ever.” No, Ronny, the nation does not need the serial liar and philanderer, the crook, the insurrectionist, the power-hungry narcissist, the a**hole who cannot articulate a single public policy with any degree of intelligence.

Back to my point. There could come a time when the 13th Congressional District of Texas needs immediate federal attention. Natural disasters do strike, you know. How does the congressman, the author of the string of idiotic, moronic and disgraceful Twitter messages ask the president for help?

Moreover, how does the president, who has been on the receiving end of these vile epithets, respond to those requests, were they to come?

I mention Jackson mainly because he represents a region I used to call home. He also has become a bit of a national media star, given his extreme anger aimed at President Biden; Fox News loves having this clown on air expressing himself in such a cavalier fashion … without ever challenging the veracity of the claims he makes.

Hey, I am just asking … for a friend.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Yeah, listen to Newtie

Newt Gingrich makes me laugh, albeit derisively, as he tries to offer advice and a critique of the state of today’s Republican Party leadership.

The former (disgraced) U.S. House speaker doesn’t think much of GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s leadership style. He likes the notions being pitched by GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and California’s U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy.

Newt Gingrich questions McConnell’s strategy for Republicans: ‘As bad as Pelosi’ | Just The News

Sigh …

I am left to wonder: What in the world is Newt Gingrich’s track record as a legislative leader?

It stinks, man!

Newtie became House speaker after the GOP took control of Congress in the 1994 Contract With America election. He managed to work pretty well (for a time) with Democratic President Bill Clinton. The two men found a way to hammer out a balanced federal budget. Good deal, yes? Of course!

President Clinton then got re-elected in 1996 and in 1998, Democrats retook command of Congress, which of course occurred on Gingrich’s watch as House speaker.

Then came the scandal that resulted in President Clinton’s impeachment. Who led the impeach-him chorus? Newt Gingrich! Oh, but wait. In real time, Newtie was boinking a staffer, cheating on his second wife, while at the same time decrying President Clinton’s behavior with the White House intern.

Gingrich eventually resigned from the House; he married the woman with whom he was taking the extramarital tumble. He went to work for Fox News and has become a royal pain in the patootie ever since.

So, when this clown critiques today’s political leadership, I am, umm … left to snicker.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

GOP pledges grim future

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

When the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate pledges to make life difficult for a Democratic president and his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, we had better sit up and pay careful attention.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has a proven record of employing his enormous obstructive skills to block legitimate efforts to move the country forward if they will benefit the agenda being followed by the right wing of his party.

Republicans appear poised to take over control of Congress after this year’s midterm election. If they do, the rumbling we hear comes from those Republicans who intend to exact revenge on Democrats. It will come in the form of blocking appointments or derailing legislative proposals. Hell, it might even result in Republicans unplugging congressional investigations into the criminal activity perpetrated on 1/6 by the previous GOP president.

This isn’t how good government is supposed to work.

McConnell exhibited his obstructionist skill in February 2016 when, after Justice Antonin Scalia died, he blocked then-President Obama’s attempt to replace Scalia with a SCOTUS nominee. It was “too close” to a presidential election that at the time was months away, McConnell said. He played his hand skillfully, as the GOP nominee won the election that year and then was able to push through three SCOTUS picks before his term ended in 2021.

The final pick was rammed through the Senate just weeks before the 2020 election, which made McConnell’s “too close to the election” call in 2016 nothing more than a ruse.

Don’t bet your last bitcoin that Congress will flip from Democratic to Republican control this year. But in case it does, then we had better prepare ourselves for a politically bloody clash.

It won’t be pretty.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Beto has a shot?

You know, there once was a time — not many weeks ago — that I considered Greg Abbott a shoo-in for re-election as Texas governor.

That Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke didn’t have a Democrat’s chance in blazing hell of defeating the Republican incumbent.

Today? I am not so sure about that gloomy forecast.

Am I going to predict a Beto O’Rourke victory this November, breaking the GOP vise-grip on statewide elected office, ending the Republican dynasty at the top of the Texas political food chain?

Not … on … your … life!

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

However, I am going to suggest that the Abbott-O’Rourke contest well might become one of those races that the national media will be watching with intense interest.

This won’t surprise any readers of this blog, but my fervent hope is that O’Rourke defeats Abbott. The governor has become show horse, a guy who wants to elevate his personal political profile with an eye toward seeking the White House in 2024. Abbott’s idiotic pledge to send “illegal immigrants” to Washington, D.C., to hand the problem to the feds is an example of a politician looking to make headlines without offering the hint of a solution.

He doesn’t have a solution. Abbott has no interest in working with Democrats or seeking cooperation from President Biden.

I have no clue about how O’Rourke might handle this matter were he elected governor. I feel confident, though, in suggesting that O’Rourke, who hails from El Paso, knows plenty about border issues and he does not favor an “open border” policy.

Nor do I believe that O’Rourke is going to single-handedly disarm Texans by stripping us of our firearms. He knows better than to mess with the Constitution! That won’t stop Abbott and his cabal of demagogues from portraying O’Rourke as a soft-on-crime liberal.

I want this race to remain competitive. I want O’Rourke to make Abbott answer for the way the state handled the 2021 winter freeze. I want O’Rourke to offer a reasonable alternative to the Abbott posturing in the face of crisis after crisis.

What’s more, I want O’Rourke to tell Texans how he plans to govern and how he intends to end the state’s war against its gay residents, how he intends to make voting easier, not harder, for Texas.

And I want Beto O’Rourke to remain firm against the attacks that are sure to come from Greg Abbott.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Cruz proves his idiocy

(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Ted Cruz deserves a special mention on this blog, given his shameful and disgraceful and despicable performance while questioning Supreme Court Justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I have made no secret of my loathing for the junior U.S. senator from Texas ever since he joined the Senate in 2013. He always has appeared to be grooming himself as a Republican presidential candidate. He took his best shot in 2016, losing the GOP nomination to the guy who eventually would win that year’s election.

I dubbed him the Cruz Missile because he seemed intent on blowing up every enemy he made along the way. The guy reportedly has few friends in the Senate.

He lectured Justice-designate Jackson on whether children are born racist and sought to paint her as soft on child pornographers and threw assorted red herrings at her during the time allotted for questioning. Granted, he wasn’t alone in behaving boorishly among Republican inquisitors. I just am feeling the urge to express my disgust at this clown who represents my interests in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.

Cruz is a coward. Why do I say that? Because the guy who once told the truth about Donald Trump — calling him a sniveling coward and an “amoral” politician — became a suck-up acolyte to the POTUS.

He also doesn’t give a damn about the people he represents. I have to point to the jaunt he sought to make with his family to Cancun while most of the state was freezing in February 2021 in that winter freeze that ended up killing hundreds of Texans.

Moreover, how much more “sniveling” can one get than to blame his daughters for the decision to flee to Mexico while Texans were freezing to death? That’s what Cruz did when he was outed for fleeing the state.

Ted Cruz ain’t among the best and brightest Texas can offer to serve in U.S. Senate. As he showed during the SCOTUS confirmation hearing, all this clown intended to do was prance, posture and preen for the GOP base that will nominate the next president of the United States.

God help us if it’s Ted Cruz.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

So much for cheering this big moment

Roy Blunt is a chump lame-duck Republican U.S. senator from Missouri who this past weekend declared to the world that Ketanji Brown Jackson’s pending confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court would be a high point in American history, as she would become the first Black woman to take her rightful place on the nation’s highest court.

Blunt then voted “no” on her confirmation.

What, then, did this GOP nimrod do when Vice President Kamala Harris declared that the Senate’s vote had officially confirmed Judge Jackson to the court? Blunt joined the rest of his GOP colleagues in walking out while the Democratic senators stood and applauded the history-making confirmation.

The only Republican to join the Democrats was Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, one of three GOP senators to vote to confirm Jackson; the other two, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, also walked out of the chamber.

I am singling out Blunt, though, because of his idiotic comments praising Judge Jackson’s legal skill, her educational background, her standing as a jurist, her obvious qualifications.

I was left to wonder: If she is all the things that Sen. Blunt said of her — which she is! — why in the name of political reason did he vote against her?

Roy Blunt, who is retiring from the Senate at the end of the year, demonstrated his true self by refusing to cheer for the history that the Senate made in confirming this eminently qualified Supreme Court appointee.

Disgusting!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Tom Cotton: demagogue

Tom Cotton this week did the seemingly impossible. He spoke in terms that would embarrass even the most shameful demagogues.

The Arkansas Republican U.S. senator actually said out loud in a Senate floor speech that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — a former public defender who is about to be confirmed to a seat on the Supreme Court — would rise to the defense of Nazi war criminals and would want them released rather than being held accountable for their crimes against humanity.

Wow! I am not sure how to respond to that bit of character assassination other than to say that Tom Cotton has provided a shameful example of the depths to which he and other demagogues will stoop to score cheap political points with the far-right-wing base of a once-great political party.

I thought Cotton’s behavior during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing of Judge Jackson’s nomination was loathsome enough. Silly me. He outdid himself by offering that despicable example of demagoguery.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

GOP exhibits astounding hypocrisy

As the nation prepares to hail the U.S. Senate confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court, I want to call attention briefly to something that became so evident during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Republicans who oppose Judge Jackson’s nomination to the court have dredged up bits and snippets of decisions she has delivered and then accused her of not telling the whole truth about why she made those decisions.

Here is where the hypocrisy shows itself in all its ugliness. These same GOP senators voted twice for a man who during his single term as president told an estimated 36,000 lies, according to a survey done by the Washington Post. They voted twice for a serial liar in 2016 and again in 2020. The good news for the nation is that in 2020, most American voters cast ballots for Joe Biden, sending the former Liar in Chief out the door.

What will stick in my craw likely until the day they throw me into my grave will be the hypocrisy exhibited by the likes of Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Marsha Blackburn, Thom Tillis, Lindsey Graham and others as they concocted reasons to oppose an eminently qualified candidate for the nation’s highest court.

They should be ashamed. Except that they have no shame.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, State news

Don’t spend my money, Mr. AG

The hits just keep mounting for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Not only is Paxton in a Republican Party runoff to keep his job, he is being pounded for spending taxpayer funds to pay for his legal defense against complaints over the way he conducts his office.

What a joke! Except that I ain’t laughing.

Paxton reportedly spent at least $43,000 in public money to pay for legal defense fees. The Texas State Bar filed complaints alleging misconduct over Paxton’s specious lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election result. Critics have noted that the Texas Constitution does not require AGs to be members of the State Bar and they contend it is inappropriate for taxpayers to foot the bill for a public official’s private law license.

There is that, as well as the pending state trial over allegations that Paxton committed securities fraud violations. He has been under felony indictment since 2015, the first year of his time as attorney general.

My own wish is that Paxton just resign. He is an embarrassment to the state.

Now comes the news that he is using public money — my money and your money — for private use.

Keep your grubby mitts off my dough, Mr. AG!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Blunt said this about KBJ?

Roy Blunt, the lame-duck Republican U.S. senator from Missouri, said some strange things about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson today while being interviewed on ABC News.

Blunt said Jackson’s expected confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court will be a “high point” in U.S. history; he said she is well qualified; that she has a good educational background; that it is past time for the SCOTUS to have an African American woman among its ranks; that she has a good legal mind.

Then he said he will vote “no” on her confirmation. Why? Because of her judicial philosophy.

Good grief!

It was a bizarre recitation that exhibited Blunt’s political cowardice as he prepares to retire from the Senate at the end of the year.

I cannot recall ever hearing someone say so many positive things about a political appointee before declaring he wouldn’t support that person to the seat to which she has been nominated.

Weird. Simply weird.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com