Tag Archives: 2020 election

local news, national news, political news

Well now … that was some KAG rally in Big D

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To my friends and assorted loved ones who expressed concern that I was plunging into the belly of the beast by attending a Donald Trump re-election rally, I have good news.

I survived. Intact. No one laid a hand on me. No one got angry. I stayed for as long as I wanted to stay and left on my terms.

There. Now that we’ve cleared that up, I want to offer a word or two about what I saw at the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas this afternoon and evening.

I saw a huge crowd of Trump fanatics — the vast majority of whom (close to 90 percent, I am guessing) — wearing Donald Trump gear. MAGA hats. Shirts with assorted sayings and slogans; some of them were profane and expressed a good bit of anger.

I met a very nice couple from Rockwall, who drove all the way into Dallas to see their man, the president. I confided in them while we waited outside that “I am not a Trump supporter. I am here as an observer.” OK, I didn’t tell them the whole truth, that I was there as a fervent anti-Trump voter and that I intend to keep skewering Trump whenever possible. They promised to read my blog on the subject and I hope they don’t hate me too much.

There were t-shirts with the message: Trump Supporter, I Won’t Apologize For It.” When have you seen a political supporter offer up that qualifier? Anyone? Oh, and there was this gem: “Fu** Your Feelings.” I didn’t have the courage to ask if those wearing that article of clothing were among Trump’s evangelical base of supporters.

The crowd outside was remarkable in its ethnic/racial makeup. It was not as lily white as I expected. I saw several African-American men wearing “Blacks for Trump” attire.

Then there was the shirt that said “Jesus Is My Savior, Trump Is My President.” Actually, that one made me want to hurl, given that the shirt contained the name of Jesus Christ and arguably the most anti-Christian man ever elected to the presidency. Enough of that.

I stood in a line that stretched more than a mile and a half. We snaked our way around several barriers outside the AAC, then walked up the steps and into the building. The U.S. Secret Service did a remarkably thorough but quick inspection of everyone entering the arena.

I found a seat way up high.

Then out came the president of the United States, applauding along with the cheering crowd. I never can tell why he claps so much when he enters a room. Is he cheering those who are clapping for him … or is he just so damn proud of himself that he cannot resist giving himself an ovation?

Whatever.

He launched into the same tired tirade I’ve been hearing since he took office. Democrats are the enemy. So are the media. Everyone opposed to Trump and the Republican Party want “open borders,” they want to “take away your rights,” they favor “socialism” over capitalism, they hate the United States, and on and on.

Admission time: I didn’t stay for Trump’s entire tirade. I heard all I could stand and left.

My final takeaway from this Trump “Keep America Great” rally is this: The enthusiasm of the 16,000 or so in the arena and in line waiting to get into the AAC is as fervent as anything I have ever seen at events such as this. I will give Trump credit for that much; his base of support is seemingly unshakable.

Which makes me wonder yet again: Are these Trump loyalists so blinded by their fealty to this man that they can overlook the crimes he has committed? Or are they — and there’s no pleasant way to say this — just plain ignorant?

national news

National divide might take generations to mend

Oh, how I hate the division that is threatening our national fabric. Really, I believe we are heading for fracturing that might take generations to heal.

Donald Trump got elected president in 2016 promising, among other things, to heal the wounds that divided us during that brutal campaign. How has he done? Not well … not well at all!

Indeed, the president has done next to nothing to even attempt to heal those wounds. The Charlottesville, Va., riot in2017 provides an example of what I mean. Klansmen and Nazis gathered in Charlottesville to protest the taking down of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee; counter protesters showed up, one of the counter protesters got run down and killed by one of the Nazis. Trump then said there were “fine people … on both sides!” Oh, no. There weren’t fine folks on both sides, Mr. President.

It has been like during Trump’s term as president.

We are degenerating into a society with intense anger fueled in large part by those who adhere to the president’s scorched-Earth policy regarding his foes.

To be fair, I don’t mean to toss all the blame solely at the president’s feet. There has been a good bit invective hurled at him from the other side. Perhaps the most egregious utterance came from a newly elected Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib, who declared at a rally that “we’re going to impeach the motherfu****!”

I don’t remember, though, who started this political pi**ing match. At this point, it doesn’t matter to me.

What matters is that we’re entering a presidential election season shrouded under the clouds of probable impeachment over presidential solicitation of foreign government help in his re-election fight. Donald Trump is going to launch every rhetorical missile in his formidable arsenal at his foes, who are likely to return fire with equal gusto.

I am just a spectator and a chump blogger with plenty to say about all that is unfolding in front of us. I don’t like what I am seeing and hearing.

I want it to end. I’ll get to my proposed solution right here: It will end only when Donald Trump is no longer president of the United States. He needs to be shown the door.

national news

Tulsi Gabbard thinks better of boycott

I generally detest boycotts. They don’t work. They are mostly counterproductive, especially when a political candidate who needs public exposure seeks to “boycott” an event where he or she would get the exposure needed for political success.

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii had planned to boycott Tuesday night’s joint appearance with 11 other Democratic presidential candidates. Then she thought better of it.

Gabbard had said the Democratic National Committee was “rigging” the primary season to favor other candidates and that, by golly, she was having none of it.

Oh, but wait a second! Gabbard is languishing in the very low single digits in public approval among the Democrats vying to run against Donald Trump in November 2020. So, were she to “boycott” the joint appearance, she would do her already struggling candidacy more harm.

She’s changed her mind. She’ll show up on the stage in Ohio and will have her say among the still large field of Democrats.

Gabbard has some important things to say. She is being overshadowed by all the coverage of the front rank of Democrats — Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg come to mind.

I am glad she’ll be on that stage. A boycott would have sunk her even farther than she already stands among the crowd of Democratic contenders/pretenders.

Who knows? There might be a breakout moment in store for Rep. Gabbard. The only way it can happen is if she’s standing alongside her foes going toe-to-toe on the issues of the day.

national news

Sen. Cruz is breaking his silence on Trump and election interference

What do you know about this?

Ted Cruz, who I dislike intensely in his role as the junior U.S. senator from Texas, is speaking out — finally! — on this matter of election interference from foreign governments.

Cruz, the Republican firebrand who nearly lost his seat in 2018, now says that foreign governments have no place in our nation’s electoral system. None, man! He has been critical of Donald Trump’s asking for electoral help from China and Ukraine.

According to the Texas Tribune: During an appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation, Cruz said no foreign government should be involved in American elections.

“That’s true for all of them,” he told moderator Margaret Brennan. “It should be the American people deciding elections.”

OK, so he hasn’t yet declared that Donald Trump needs to get booted out of office because of his solicitation of help from foreign governments. However, his statement — in my view — marks an important turning point in GOP reticence regarding the president’s current difficulties.

Trump is facing increasingly probable impeachment by the House of Representatives over issues relating to foreign interference in our elections. Cruz isn’t likely to join his Democratic colleagues in calling for Trump’s impeachment, conviction and ouster. However, at least The Cruz Missile is standing on an important principle that has been lost on the president.

What’s more, Cruz told Face the Nation that Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, needs to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in connection with reports that the former New York City mayor met with Ukrainian officials about Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, regarding Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine.

Is the senator signaling a turn against a president — who he once called a “sniveling coward” and an “amoral” narcissist who is unfit for the presidency?

I won’t bet the mortgage on it. Then again … stranger events have occurred.

national news

Trump provides one of life’s mysteries

Life is full of mysteries. Things happen that we cannot explain, no matter how hard we try to comprehend them.

One of the current mysteries of life involves the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Specifically, it is a mind-boggling mystery to me how this guy maintains his vise-grip of support among Americans who I am certain do not subscribe to The Donald’s personal code of living.

Many millions of Americans who retain their adulation of this fellow are straitlaced (and I mean that in the good way), God-fearing folks who are faithful to their spouses, who follow the Golden Rule, who do not cheat their way through business deals.

Yet the president of the United States has admitted to philandering; he says he never has sought forgiveness; he acknowledges that he seeks to operate in a climate of fear.

Trump got elected president of the United States after waging one of the more vicious campaigns in U.S. history. His re-election effort is likely to make his election campaign look like a Scout picnic in comparison.

And yet … he holds onto his core of support. I just looked at the RealClearPolitics poll average and Trump maintains a 43 percent approval rating among Americans. Remember that the RCP average includes all major surveys, those that lean right and those that lean left. RCP averages ’em up and we see that Trump’s support doesn’t waver much — even in the wake of credible evidence that he has committed impeachable offenses.

This might offer yours truly some grist for questioning Trump’s supporters this week. I am going to attend the Donald Trump MAGA rally at the American Airlines Center in Dallas on Thursday. I’ll get there early. I’ll have my notebook and pen in hand. I just might pose the question in search of one of life’s mysteries.

My challenge will be to ask these folks in a manner that doesn’t rile them up. I know it’s a challenge. I shall do my best to get the answer that has eluded me all this time.

I always have wanted political leaders to exhibit some level of goodness. They need not be goodie-two-shoes, but merely individuals who at minimum treat others the way they want others to treat them. Does the president adhere to that code? Hardly.

I hope to get a better understanding of this mysterious aspect of POTUS’s core of support. This inquiring mind needs to know.

national news

Democrats need to heed the words of ex-Sen. Reid

Harry Reid no longer leads the U.S. Senate Democratic caucus. However, he remains a voice of wisdom earned through all his years of waging partisan battles against those on the other side of the aisle.

His latest nugget comes in the form of warning to Democrats who are facing off against Donald J. Trump: Do not take the Republican president lightly, says Reid, who adds that while Trump might not be an intellectual heavyweight, he is still a “smart man.”

Yes, Trump is in trouble politically. He is facing a near certain impeachment by the House of Representatives over allegations of abuse of power and his seeking foreign government help in bringing down Joe Biden, a potential 2020 campaign opponent.

Reid, though, believes Trump will be a difficult foe to beat in 2020 because he plays rough and tough and is willing to say anything about anyone as long as it plays well to his political base. He fires ’em up.

As Reid told David Axelrod on CNN: “I used to think that Donald Trump was not too smart. I certainly don’t believe that anymore. No matter what the subject, any argument he involves himself in, it’s on his terms.“

So it should go as the 2020 presidential campaign ramps up. Democrats will have their hands full trying to defeat this individual.

I concur with Sen. Reid. Trump isn’t an intellectual titan, despite his empty and idiotic boasts about being a “stable genius.” He is cunning, cagey … and ruthless in the extreme. 

Donald Trump also needs to be kicked out of the Oval Office.

national news

Trump misses irony of his anti-Biden tirade

I was stunned to hear Donald John Trump deliver a blistering and crass rebuke of Joseph Biden Jr., in which he said the only way he succeeded at being vice president was that he figure out “how to kiss Barack Obama’s a**.”

I want to offer a few examples.

My goodness, the irony of that statement is astonishing in the extreme. You see, the only thing that the president of the United States seems to demand from those who answer to him is for the underlings to kiss his own a**.

Trump demands loyalty from, say, the director of the FBI. When James Comey doesn’t deliver it, he gets fired. Attorney General Jeff Sessions wouldn’t take part in the Russia investigation because he recognized the obvious conflict of interest, given that he worked on Trump’s campaign and couldn’t investigate himself; he recused himself and then got fired by Trump.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson got canned because he challenged the president’s authority to enact certain policies; so did former national security advisor H.R. McMaster.

The list is seemingly endless.

Donald Trump wants his sycophants to kiss his backside. He demands fealty, blind loyalty. He doesn’t appear to tolerate dissent.

So, for the president to make such a suggestion about former Vice President Joe Biden is laughable on its face.

Except that it’s not funny.

national news, political news

This impeachment thing appears to be growing more tentacles

As I seek to follow the ongoing impeachment crisis threatening the presidency of Donald Trump, I am getting a sense that the story is getting bigger than many Americans would prefer.

Just three weeks ago we learned about a phone call that Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodormyr Zellenskiy in which he sought a favor from Ukraine in exchange for releasing money to help Ukrainians fight Russian aggressors.

The phone call prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to launch an impeachment inquiry. The thought as I understood at the time was that the House would move rapidly toward an impeachment vote by Thanksgiving. It would be a narrowly focused matter: whether the president violated his oath by seeking foreign government help in his re-election and seeking foreign help in digging up dirt on Joe Biden, a potential foe in the 2020 presidential election.

Now it seems as if this story is getting many more tentacles.

Trump appeared to suggest that the vice president, Mike Pence, had conversations with Ukrainians as well; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at first denied knowledge of the Trump-Zellenskiy phone conversation, then acknowledged he was “on the call”; questions have now arisen about Turkey and whether the president’s decision to abandon our allies in Kurdistan in the fight against ISIS is somehow related to a Trump Towers deal in Istanbul.

My head is spinning, man.

Does all of this come together quickly? Can there be an impeachment vote by Thanksgiving? Can the Senate commence a trial and make a decision by, say, spring 2020? Is all of this getting so muddy that we won’t have a resolution until after the 2020 presidential election?

As if it needed to get more complicated. The juxtaposition of a re-election fight and an impeachment muddies matters beyond anything the nation has experienced. President Clinton was a lame-duck second-term president when the House impeached him in 1998; President Nixon was in the same boat when the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment in 1974. Neither man faced re-election.

This whole scenario is vastly different. Moreover, it keeps growing in its complexity as more Cabinet officials get sucked into the debate over what they knew and when they knew it.

I need something to settle my nerves.

I also want this saga to end — either through impeachment and Senate conviction, or at the ballot box — with Donald Trump vacating the Oval Office for a final time.

local news

That’s why they’re called ‘exploratory committees’

What do you know about this? Texas state Sen. Pat Fallon, a Republican from Prosper, has decided against running for the U.S. Senate in 2020.

He had formed an exploratory committee to, um, explore the possibilities of challenging U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary.

He’s decided to stay in the Texas Senate and not expose his wife and young sons to the rigors of trying to pull Sen. Cornyn even farther to the right.

It’s a smart move, Sen. Fallon.

For starters, Sen. Cornyn is pretty far right already. He is a reliable opponent of gun control measures, of abortion rights, of the Affordable Care Act. That’s just three issues.

Trust me on this: Pat Fallon didn’t need to seek to make Texas’s senior U.S. senator even more conservative. So he’ll forgo a race against Cornyn.

It just goes to show that these efforts occasionally produce the kind of result that Pat Fallon has found. It’s why they’re called “exploratory committees.”

local news

Oh, the conundrum facing this friend of two possible candidates

Mac Thornberry’s announcement that he won’t seek re-election to the 13th Congressional District seat he has held since 1995 presents a potential quandary for me.

I want to emphasize the potential part of that issue, because I do not yet know how this whole story is going to play out.

It involves a possible successor to the veteran Clarendon, Texas, Republican lawmaker.

OK, for starters, I’ll go with what I have heard, which is that a good friend of mine, Greg Sagan, has declared his intention to run as a Democrat once again for the seat that Thornberry will vacate next year. Sagan lost to Thornberry in 2018, which is no surprise, given the 13th District’s strong Republican leaning.

I couldn’t vote in that race, as I no longer live in Amarillo. Were I able to vote, I would have cast my ballot for my friend Greg Sagan. He is smart, articulate, ideologically progressive. He’s also a fellow Vietnam War veteran; so, he’s a kind of a “brother” to me, as Vietnam vets would understand.

He’ll run again in 2020. I hate saying this out loud, but his chances of prevailing in a district drawn to benefit Republicans seems almost as distant as they were when he challenged a veteran incumbent.

Which brings me to a still-hypothetical scenario. That involves a possible/potential Republican who might decide he wants a crack at the congressional seat. This fellow also is a friend of mine.

I refer to state Rep. Four Price, also of Amarillo.

I don’t know this as fact, but I am willing to bet real American money that some movers and shakers within the Panhandle Republican network have already broached the subject to Price, who has become something of a star in the Texas Legislature.

Price’s name was kicked around as a possible speaker after former Speaker Joe Straus left the Legislature prior to the 2019 session. He has earned his spurs as a champion for mental health reform.

So, what kind of congressman would Four Price make? He would be effective. He would learn the ropes quickly. Furthermore, he would be eminently electable, given his solid Republican credentials as a candidate in a solid Republican congressional district.

However, I wouldn’t dare make an endorsement in a contest involving Greg Sagan and Four Price. I would be terribly conflicted.

I am virtually certain Sagan will run. I don’t know what Four Price’s plans include. Nonetheless, Mac Thornberry’s pending departure opens the door wide for an intelligent, thoughtful conservative Republican to run as a successor to a congressional veteran.

Man, I detest quandaries … even if they aren’t yet developed fully.