Tag Archives: GOP

local news, media news

Ethical breach? Yep!

A candidate for a Texas Senate seat has confirmed for me a suspicion I had hoped would prove false. Dang! I hate to rat out someone who works at a newspaper that paid me nicely for nearly 18 years.

I reached out to a candidate who had lost the Republican primary to Kevin Sparks, who won the GOP nomination for Texas Senate District 31. I was curious about something I read on the eve of the March 1 primary in the Amarillo Globe-News: It was a lengthy op-ed column from the guy who won the primary; he extolled his virtues as a candidate for the Senate seat. It was, to put it bluntly, nothing more than a political advertisement for which he should have paid money. He didn’t. The newspaper granted him the space for free.

I asked the fellow who finished second in that primary — Tim Reid of Amarillo — whether the newspaper had given him the space to sing his own political virtues. His answer: “Not at all. The GN didn’t even run my announcement press release.”

Let me blunt. The Globe-News committed what I consider to be a serious ethical sin. It occurred in two parts. One was that the paper reportedly offered only candidate — the man it endorsed for the primary — a chance to bloviate on why voters should choose him over any other candidate in the race. The second sin concerns the timing of the op-ed column: It ran on the day before the election, giving no one a chance to rebut, refute or rebuke whatever the candidate had to say about himself.

I also reached out to the editor of the opinion pages of the Globe-News, inquiring about whether any of this is true. He hasn’t responded. Therefore, I feel no hesitation about speaking my mind about how I believe the readers of a once-good newspaper have been let down by the publication.

Fairness dictated that the newspaper would offer all the candidates the same opportunity to speak out. It is unfair in the extreme that a publication such as the Globe-News would fall far short in meeting that responsibility. What’s more, the notion of fairness also requires the newspaper to grant anyone the chance to challenge an assertion that a candidate makes about himself, or about his opponents. Sparks didn’t say a word in his essay about another candidate, so that’s not an issue.

However, what is an issue is the obvious bias displayed by the publisher of the Globe-News in favor of one candidate for public office. That is unacceptable.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Big Lie involves just one contest?

to insist that the “widespread voter fraud” that allegedly prevented The Donald from winning re-election without also suggesting that other contests throughout the ballots in all states also deserve to be examined.

The Big Lie involves only one contest in the 2020 election. The race for president was the only contest that became targeted by voter fraudsters. No race for governor, or for U.S. Senate, or U.S. House, or state legislatures, or county clerks, sheriffs, district attorneys have been questioned.

Just the race for president.

Hmm. What is going on here? Don’t answer. I know the answer. What is happening is that The Donald’s cult is keeping this Big Lie alive. The Donald won’t concede that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020. His refusal to accept his defeat only has fed the anger that the cultists share with their leader. The anger is festering and threatens to burst, like a boil on the buttocks and it will infect the entire electoral system.

This is a monumental tragedy playing out in real time.

For anyone to accept that the cult leader is an acceptable candidate for the presidency — yet again! — after his disgraceful conspiracy-mongering is utterly beyond me.

I realize fully that I don’t understand a lot of things in life. The Big Lie, though, is easy to explain. It draws breath because one individual cannot accept the obvious fact that he lost an election. What is more difficult for me to grasp is how the single 2020 election can be separated from all the rest of the balloting. The casualties, sadly, are the dedicated state and local elections officials who worked damn hard to ensure that all the elections that took place were done fairly, legally and were free of corruption.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Judge Jackson: get set for grilling

The mood of the times requires — I am sorry to admit — that even highly qualified presidential nominees are going to endure the third, fourth or fifth degrees from the individuals who will pass judgment on whether they should assume the post for which the president has nominated them.

Thus, Ketanji Brown Jackson needs to prepare herself for the grilling of her life as she sits before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will determine whether to move her nomination to the full Senate for confirmation.

Judge Jackson will sit eventually on the U.S. Supreme Court once she goes through the inquisition that awaits her. As near as I can tell, she is supremely qualified to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring when the current SCOTUS term ends. However, that will not stop Republican senators from looking for any excuse to vote “no” on this individual’s nomination. Her stellar legal career be damned! Same for her judicial temperament. Never mind that her knowledge of the law likely eclipses every single senator — Democrat and Republican — who will run her through her paces.

Texas’s two senators, Republicans John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, are likely negative votes regardless of anything Judge Jackson will tell the committee. I expect the Cruz Missile to vote “no”; he couldn’t ever find it within that organ he calls a heart to approve a sterling nominee put forward by a Democratic president. I expected more from Cornyn, but his public comments suggest to me that he leans “no” without hearing a word from Judge Jackson.

I am not going to harp on the obvious knowledge of most Americans that Judge Jackson is an African American woman; President Biden pledged to appoint someone such as Judge Jackson when he ran for the office in 2020.

Her sparkling legal background makes her a stellar nominee, regardless of the president pledged.

It won’t be a smooth ride to the nation’s highest judicial bench … but damn, she needs to get there.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

How can this riot stand?

No doubt about this: I will go to my grave never understanding how in the name of sanity can anyone justify what happened on 1/6, how anyone can possibly view the riotous mob of traitors as a demonstration of “legitimate political discourse.”

The mob stormed Capitol Hill on the urging of a president of the United States who had lost re-election, who then exhorted his fanatic followers to “take back” the government and to “fight like hell” if they felt the need to rough up whoever stood in their way.

So, the rioters did what they were encouraged to do.

Every time I watch video of that hideous demonstration of sedition, I get angry all over again. The traitors threatened to “hang Mike Pence!” per the signs they were carrying. Have you seen the pictures of the noose? Lovely, yes? Pence, the vice president on that day, was performing his constitutional duty by leading the certification of the Electoral College tally that elected Joe Biden as president. Biden’s predecessor would have none of it. Hence, he incited the rioters.

And yet, there remains to this very moment congressional Republicans — who fled for their lives in the face of the rioters on 1/6 — who deny what they witnessed in real time. They cast votes against impeaching the POTUS who fired up the mob. Some of them have said the mob was acting like any “tourist” group strolling through the Capitol Building.

You … bet. I don’t think any group of tourists would have sh** on the floor of the Capitol Building, or smashed through windows, or yelled profanities at police officers seeking to protect the House members and senators who were the traitors’ targets.

There needs to be some justice delivered for what happened on 1/6. We’re starting to get some trial results. A Wylie, Texas, man has been convicted of five felony counts related to his role in the riot. There will be many more trials and deals struck along the way.

The president who caused it all? His day is coming, too. He needs to be held to account for the insurrection he incited. I do not want to check out of his world knowing that he has slithered his way clear once again.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Empower Texans tightens its grip

A right-wing political action group has lusted after legislative districts in Texas since the beginning of time, or so it seems. Empower Texans has tried to oust Texas Republicans from their seats by offering GOP primary opponents more to its liking.

It’s had a mixed record in that regard. However, the group led by a fellow named Michael Quinn Sullivan has scored some victories that for my money should cause concern across the great state.

I want to look specifically at a West Texas Senate district that will have a newbie representing it for the first time since 2004. Kel Seliger, a former Amarillo mayor, got elected to that seat after Teel Bivins vacated it to become the U.S. ambassador to Sweden. He has done well representing the entire district. His occasional beefs with conservatives in the Texas Senate pissed off Sullivan, who sought to “primary” Seliger over several election cycles. He had no luck in getting Seliger defeated.

Seliger, for his part, spoke badly of Sullivan and Empower Texans.

The veteran politician is leaving office at the end of the year. Kevin Sparks is the GOP nominee to succeed him. He will win the election this fall; I think he’s unopposed.

Sparks is another Empower Texans stalking horse. He will make very nice with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate’s presiding officer and an individual with whom Seliger had plenty of beefs over the years. Patrick got so angry with Seliger over comments Kel made about a key Patrick aide that he stripped Seliger of his committee chairmanships and sent him to the back bench.

My trick knee is telling me that Sparks will cozy up to Patrick and do whatever the hell Patrick wants him to do. That will suit Empower Texans just fine, because Sparks is its guy in Austin.

I should add that Sparks hails from Midland, which is where Empower Texans is based. Get it? Sparks is an Empower Texans homey.

Thus, the right-wingers have tightened their grip on the Texas Senate. So very sad.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

War grabs media’s attention

War has this way of grabbing everyone’s attention, even yanking other compelling stories off the front page, pushing them off the air, relegating them to “old news.”

So it is these days with a ground war erupting in Ukraine. Russian armed forces have invaded a neighboring, sovereign nation on the orders of dictator Vladimir Putin. Media around the world are reporting on it to us who want to know how this war will play out.

I am unsure how I feel about our limited attention span. I remain deeply interested in the congressional inquiry into the cause of the 1/6 insurrection. Moreover, I want to know how the House committee is progressing in its search for the truth. It will get there in due course and I plan to be waiting with bated breath when the panel reaches its finish line.

President Biden has an aggressive agenda to help boost our already-recovering economy. It is stalled in the Senate. I want to know whether the president can parlay his extensive legislative experience into working out a compromise that can push the Build Better Back bill — or some facsimile of it — to a fruitful conclusion.

There remains a boatload of issues to be resolved, if only congressional Republicans can find a way to work the Democratic president instead of obstructing him at every turn.

OK, so all of that will still be there once our attention looks elsewhere, once we remove our gaze from Ukraine. I want that moment to arrive sooner rather than later. Not because I lust for a chance to see all those matters resolve … but because I want an end to the bloodshed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Panhandle to get new Senate face

Get ready, my old friends in the Texas Panhandle. You are about to get a new brand of legislative representation in the Texas Senate. It will come in the form of a state senator who represents your interests but who lives way down yonder in Midland, more than 200 miles away.

Kevin Sparks will be the new state senator from District 31. He won the Republican Party primary election this past week.

I don’t much at all about Sparks, other than I believe he was recruited by Empower Texans — a far right political action organization out of Midland — to run for the seat vacated by longtime Republican Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo. Empower Texans is a toxic organization and I detest what it stands for and what it has done to try to undermine the political leadership in the Panhandle, where my wife and I lived for 23 years before moving away in 2019.

They have their guy now slated to take his seat in District 31.

My hope is that Sparks does as much to represent the entire district, which runs from the Permian Basin all the way to the Panhandle’s border with Oklahoma. Seliger was as fluent in Permian Basin-speak as he was in Panhandle-speak when he served in the Senate. So was his Republican predecessor, the late Teel Bivins, also of Amarillo, who served the region from 1989 until 2004, when he left to become U.S. ambassador to Sweden. The same can be said of Bivins’s predecessor, Amarillo Democrat Bill Sarpalius.

The Panhandle has essentially owned that Senate seat since the proverbial Flood. Thanks to the GOP’s efforts to reconfigure the state’s legislative boundaries, the district lost several Panhandle counties and added some more down south, thus shoring up the strength of whoever wanted to run for the seat from the Permian Basin region.

There was a time when we could call our state senator or run into him at a local restaurant. I lost count of the times I would be sharing a meal with Kel Seliger in Amarillo and his attention was diverted to whomever walked by and wanted to chat. I doubt that will be the case with Sen. Sparks dining anywhere in Amarillo or Canyon.

That makes it imperative that he elevate his presence in the “other end” of the sprawling Senate district, which now happens to be the Panhandle, which until January 2023 had one of its own representing its interests in the Texas Senate. That task now will fall to an outsider.

Don’t let ’em down up north, Sen.-to-be Sparks.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, national news, political news

GOP dynamic is baffling

I am likely to go straight to my grave never being able to comprehend the weird dynamic playing out within the Texas Republican Party in this age of The Donald and The Big Lie.

Let’s ponder for a moment some weird happenings that occurred during this past Tuesday’s March primary election.

The contest for Tarrant County judge featured two candidates, Betsy Price and Tim O’Hare, who fought tooth-and-nail for the party nomination. Sitting on the other side of the Metroplex, Price — the well-respected former Fort Worth mayor — seemed a good bet to prevail. Oh, no!

She got thumped by O’Hare, who accused her of being a “progressive” mayor who favored rules that don’t discriminate against transgender people. O’Hare then pledged to clamp down on all those hot-button issues that raise hackles among far-right conservatives: critical race theory, immigration reform, gay rights.

Then came the race for Congress in the Third House District — where my wife and I reside. Incumbent Republican Van Taylor was targeted by the far-righties within the GOP of being a traitor to the Republican cause. Keith Self, the former Collin County judge, finished second in the primary, but Taylor was set to engage Self in a May runoff … before he ended his re-election effort admitting to an affair with a Plano woman. So now it appears that Self, who believes in The Big Lie, is going to win the election this November and take his nut-job world view to Capitol Hill, where he’ll get join the likes of QAnon queens Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

The party has become a cult following. It has devolved into a once-great political organization into a cabal of kooks who won’t accept the results of a free, fair and legal presidential election, who hold out the fantasy that The Donald will run again in 2024 and actually win back the White House.

So help me Almighty God in heaven, I cannot think of a more frightening prospect than that.

And yet, we have fully grown human beings believing the sh** that flies out of The Donald’s pie hole and promise to restore some perverted version of “patriotism” to our national government.

What perhaps is most astounding of all is that not every Republican officeholder in America believes this crap, but so damn few of them are willing to speak out, stand up for the truth and call these wackos out for who they are. Who are they? They are dangerous cretins who have no business making laws or collecting taxpayers’ money.

By cracky, they’re in office and seek to cement their vise grip on the American political system by any means necessary. Just think, my family and I have ringside seats from which we are able to watch this nonsense play out.

Good grief!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news

Righteous among us tumble

My head-shaking just won’t stop in the wake of this week’s stunning announcement regarding a North Texas congressman, a self-proclaimed conservative lawmaker who — I am going to presume — was proud of his “family values.”

Republican Van Taylor ended his re-election campaign Wednesday after disclosing he had an extramarital dalliance with a Plano woman, a so-called “ISIS bride” who once was married to an officer in the Islamic State terrorist organization. Geez, that alone is enough to make me wonder about a lot of other things.

Taylor was heading for a runoff after Tuesday’s GOP primary.

What is so damn disturbing about this — actually one of many things that ought to disturb any of us — is the way Taylor characterized himself as a staunch conservative, someone who stood for strong values. The implication of those values statements is clear, that he is a devoted to his wife and children. Well, the way I see it, one’s devotion must be complete, unequivocal and unconditional.

Taylor has apologized profusely to his family and to his constituents. I am one of the latter and I will accept the apology and I will wish him well as he tries to rebuild his life. Whether he is able to rebuild his family is a matter for them to decide.

My only concern — as a Third Congressional District constituent — is that Taylor stays away from public service. I don’t want him representing my interests at any level of government. You see, I don’t much care for public officials who profess to be of a certain stripe, but who are hiding dark secrets that reveal them to be something quite different.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

military news, national news

GOP loon disgraces herself

As much as I had hoped there wouldn’t be a display of disrespect of the president during his State of the Union speech, my hope was dashed about two-thirds of the way through President Biden’s speech to a joint congressional session Tuesday night.

Rep. Lauren Boebert demonstrated the lowest of the low points of where the modern GOP has sunk in recent years.

The president was speaking about his late son’s exposure to dangerous chemicals while serving in the Army during the Iraq War and was about to speculate as to whether Major Beau Biden’s exposure brought on the cancer that killed him; then Boebert — along with her QAnon colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene — decided to yell an epithet from the chamber. Boebert said something about Joe Biden being responsible for the deaths of 13 service personnel during the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

That moment surely will go down in infamy. Boebert’s outburst drew boos even from her fellow Republican lawmakers.

She disgraced the office she occupies, disrespected the president and the commander in chief and showed the entire world that she lacks the class, grace and decorum to vote on laws that affect every single American.

I always have believed we are better than to send morons to Congress such as Lauren Boebert. I was wrong. I am not a constituent of hers, given that I do not live in the congressional district she was elected to represent. I am, however, a proud American patriot who obeys the laws on which she votes, which gives me standing to declare that I despise Lauren Boebert and everything she believes.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com