Tag Archives: GOP

national news

Honest Abe: unelectable

This is the face of an unelectable politician and, no, it is not because he isn’t particularly “telegenic.” It is because his ideas within his beloved Republican Party have become grist for the trash heap.

Consider the very notion that the man I consider to be our nation’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, is no longer the voice and face of a party that once called itself “The Party of Lincoln.” President Lincoln held the nation together during its darkest period, during the time when Americans fought each other over slavery and that thing one side referred to as “states’ rights.”

Then, as the Civil War drew to a close and as President Lincoln delivered his second inaugural speech after winning re-election in 1864, he said he would bind the wounds that divided us, that he would proceed with “malice toward none and charity for all.” An assassin struck a month later and denied the president the chance to deliver on his promise.

The party under which he ran for president twice has become something the president wouldn’t recognize. He certainly would not condone the tone it has taken in recent years. It has been hijacked and twisted into a form that bears no resemblance to the party of the so-called “big tent.”

Donald John Trump’s control over the party starting with the 2016 GOP presidential primary campaign has taken it on a destructive course. It’s not that the party is destroying itself. It is that the ideas it promotes has gained new followers who are wedded to the hideous notions espoused by its leader.

The Grand Old Party has become a cult whose followers are infiltrating the ranks of candidates throughout Congress and into statehouses, county courthouses and even into ostensibly non-partisan city halls and school board meeting rooms.

Imagine a Republican with the chops of Abraham Lincoln seeking public office today. Imagine how the 16th president himself would fare were he to become a candidate.

Abraham Lincoln likely couldn’t be elected as a Republican because his party would lack the good sense to nominate him in the first place. The future of civil discourse and debate in this country deserves better than what lies ahead.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Trump ‘shouldn’t lead the GOP’

Asa Hutchinson has just become persona non grata in the cult-following world of Donald J. Trump. Why? Because the Republican Arkansas governor spoke the blunt truth about Trump’s ability to lead his party, let alone to become president of the United States of America.

God forbid the latter from occurring.

Hutchinson leads the Republican Governors Association and he said this weekend that Trump is unfit for the office he once held. “I do not believe Trump is the one to lead our party and our country again, as president,” Hutchinson told Insider on the sidelines of the NGA Winter Meeting in Washington, DC.

He was responding, apparently, to a video that’s gone viral in which Trump declares himself to be the “45th and 47th president.” Good gawd.

Hutchinson now is likely to become a target of the Trump cultists/wackos/idiots who cling to the notion that the former Idiot in Chief is going to seek the highest office … yet again.

In truth, though, Gov. Hutchinson is speaking realistically about the absolute worthlessness that Donald Trump brings to any reasonable or rational debate that needs to occur.

Donald Trump should not lead the country again, says the Republican leader of the National Governors Association (msn.com)

His message will pass through the vacuous skulls of millions of Trumpkins, if you’ll pardon the pithy reference, like sh** through the proverbial goose.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

You tell ’em, Kel

Kel Seliger’s status as a lame-duck Texas state senator appears to have given the veteran Republican legislator some gumption as he has delivered a harsh reality to the state’s efforts at redrawing its legislative districts.

Seliger, who hails from Amarillo, said in a court deposition that the GOP-controlled Legislature broke the law in redrawing the boundaries in Senate District 10. “Having participated in the 2011 and 2013 Senate Select Redistricting Committee proceedings and having read the prior federal court decision regarding SD10, it was obvious to me that the renewed effort to dismantle SD 10 violated the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution,” Seliger said in his remarks to the court.

According to the Texas Tribune: Under the map passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, some Black and Hispanic populations previously in District 10 were split into two other districts with majority-white electorates. The Black and Hispanic voters who remain in the newly drawn District 10, in urban areas of south Fort Worth, were lumped in with several rural, mostly white counties to the south and west that drive up the district’s population of white eligible voters while diminishing the number of voters of color.

GOP Sen. Kel Seliger says Texas violated federal voting rights law | The Texas Tribune

Well … isn’t that what many critics of the Legislature have alleged against Republicans who control the body?

Now we have one of the Legislature’s top GOP senators saying that he agrees with the critics. Is that what I am reading? I believe that’s the case.

To which I say only that it would have been good to hear such candor coming when Sen. Seliger was still in the thick of the fight. As it stands now, he is on the sidelines and is heading for the exit at the end of the year.

I say this as a friend of the senator. I consider him to have been an effective representative for the Texas Panhandle, where I lived for more than two decades. Seliger and I go back a while and I have long admired him for his independent streak and his pluck while serving in the Senate.

I mean, any guy who can piss off fellow Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, as Seliger has done, is OK in my book.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

GOP = insanity

The Republican Party has gone insane. It should be declared incompetent to stand up to public scrutiny. It needs to be stripped down, dismantled, reassembled and reintroduced to the American political mainstream.

I say this as a good-government progressive who tilts toward the Democratic Party. I want the Republican Party to become the Grand Old Party, the Party of Lincoln and the party of inclusion and the so-called “big tent.”

Goodness, the party’s big tent now has become a haven for fruitcakes, insurrectionists, dangerous demagogues and, yes, those with treasonous instincts.

To think that the Republican Party would continue to align itself with a twice-impeached POTUS who continues to foment The Big Lie about alleged voter fraud is to consign the once-great political party to the scrap heap of history. I hope that is where the former POTUS is headed as well. Time will determine his Earthly fate.

The reason for my wanting a strong Republican Party is simple. I want the party to exist as a legitimate, viable political institution to challenge Democrats intelligently and with sane reason. What we have now is a party wedded to the fallacy that an insurrection that occurred in January 2021 was nothing more than a protest that got out of control. Oh, no. It was much worse than that. Republican congressional leaders keep denying what the entire world witnessed on 1/6.

This is the stuff of insanity. It must be excised from the Republican Party. If it takes a total dismembering of the party, then so be it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Biden down, far from out

Listen up, Joe Biden haters. The president is down, to be sure. Do not, though, start ringing the death knell over the presidency of the man who fought for more than 30 years to attain the highest office in the land.

I acknowledge fully that President Biden has endured a rough first year. Let me remind everyone of a couple of recent historical events.

Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 and also had a bad first year. Yes, he was shot and nearly killed three months into the presidency. Then the Republican Party got drubbed in the 1982 midterm election. President Reagan, though, got re-elected in 1984 in a smashing 49-state landslide. That’s one.

Bill Clinton became president in 1993. He, too, suffered a rough first year. Republicans seized control of Congress in 1994. Ah, but then President Clinton cruised to re-election in 1996. That’s two.

Barack Obama assumed office in 2009. He set out to pass the Affordable Care Act; Congress obliged. Then Democrats got what Obama described as a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterm election. President Obama then went on to win re-election in 2012.

I know we have had plenty of one-term presidents who never got it together. George H.W. Bush fell from a 90% approval rating to losing his re-election effort in 1992; Jimmy Carter endured inflation and a general feeling of disgust and lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980; Donald Trump … well, you know what happened there.

President Biden is only in the “first quarter” of a long game, writes Paul Brandus in USA Today. There’s a way out of the morass, Brandus writes: The president’s biggest mistake has surprised me. He hasn’t spent enough time talking up last year’s economic achievements. “America’s economy improved more in Joe Biden’s first 12 months than any president during the past 50 years,” Bloomberg reported last month, “notwithstanding the contrary media narrative contributing to dour public opinion.”

Joe Biden has had a rocky year in office. But, folks, this is only the first quarter. (yahoo.com)

And so it might go moving ahead into the next year and the year after that. We still have that pandemic. It still is making people sick. We keep hearing that the end is in sight. Maybe. We hope.

I am going to stand with the president as he keeps fighting for the country.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

Pipe down, Newtie!

Newt Gingrich, the one-time Republican congressional bomb-thrower and former speaker of the House, needs to settle down and take a quick look back at a little Capitol Hill history.

“I think it’s clear that these are people who are literally just running over the law, pursuing innocent people, causing them to spend thousands and thousands of dollars in legal fees for no justification and it’s basically a lynch mob and unfortunately the attorney general of the United States has joined the lynch mob and is totally misusing the FBI,” Gingrich said over the weekend.

He is projecting that if the GOP takes control of Congress after the midterm election that Democrats on the 1/6 select committee could face criminal prosecution over the way they have conducted the committee’s probe into the insurrection that occurred on Capitol Hill.

What balderdash!

If we flash back to around 2016, when the GOP last controlled Congress, we can find evidence of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee badgering, tormenting and hectoring witnesses as it sought to find something for which it could blame for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Benghazi, Libya crisis. Remember that one? Terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and four Americans — including our ambassador to Libya — died in the melee. What did the House panel do? It launched a years-long probe into, subjecting Clinton, for example, to 11 hours of testimony before the committee.

That panel ran far more amok than the 1/6 committee that is trying to get the truth behind Donald Trump’s effort to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election result.

So, with that I’ll just demand that the ex-speaker shut his trap.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Uncategorized

‘Missing the boat’ on terror?

At first, I wasn’t sure I heard correctly what a North Texas congresswoman said about President Biden’s responsibility for the terrorist attack on a Colleyville synagogue.

She said Biden is paying “too much attention” on “far-right domestic terrorists” and ignoring the threat from foreign terrorists. Biden is “missing the boat” on the terror threats, she said.

So said Beth Van Duyne, a Republican whose congressional district includes the Colleyville community that is home to the synagogue where a British citizen took four people hostage.

In a House floor speech, Van Duyne proposed a resolution citing the heroism of the rabbi who tossed a chair at the hostage-taker, giving himself and his three congregants a chance to escape. FBI agents then stormed the Congregation Beth Israel and shot the hostage-taker to death; Van Duyne wants to honor their heroism as well.

Yes, indeed, there is plenty of heroism to honor and I am glad Van Duyne wants to bestow that recognition.

However, I will not accept that President Biden is to blame for allegedly ignoring the threat of terrorists who come to this country to do us harm. My goodness, Biden responded quickly with a statement that declared the man’s threats in Colleyville to be a “terrorist act.”

I guess my question of the moment is: How in the world does one stop someone from doing what the lunatic did? He wasn’t on terrorist watch lists of which I am aware. He walked into the synagogue, shook hands with the rabbi, Charlie Cytron-Walker, and then surprised everyone with demands that the Justice Department release a woman held in a federal prison on terror-related crimes.

Van Duyne said that the loon didn’t take hostages “at an Applebee’s,” that he targeted a synagogue because he intended to commit a hate crime.

I will point out, too, that FBI Director Christophe Wray — appointed to his post by Donald J. Trump — said in 2019 that domestic terror presented the gravest threat to our national security.

There’s a saying we hear in Washington from time to time about how officials are able to “walk and chew gum at the same time.” I believe President Biden is devoting ample attention to threats from all corners … be they foreign or domestic.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Uncategorized

I hear ya, Joe

Mr. President, allow me to say that I happen to agree with you about one aspect of the presidency that has dragged your approval rating down among Americans across the land.

I also agree that I — along with others of us — didn’t anticipate the stubborn refusal of Republican members of Congress to work with you for the common good of all of us. I mean, so help me, I actually thought that your experience as a senator and your eight years as vice president would have bought you some good will once you took over the presidency from the fraudulent imposter who occupied the office for the four previous years.

I have seen the video of Republicans and Democrats singing your praises in the Senate near the end of your term as VP. For God’s sake, even Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said it was a pleasure to work with you. What’s he doing now? He is standing in the way of damn near everything you are trying to do.

The moron you succeeded keeps hurling epithets at McConnell, but the senator won’t accept the notion that POTUS No. 45 is unfit for office and must be derailed in his attempt to influence the political discussion going forward.

Then again, Mitch isn’t the worst of ’em. The idiot brigade among the GOP congressional caucus is being led by the likes of Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida. I could go on, Mr. President, but you get my drift, right?

I am going to stand with you, sir. I voted for you, and I am proud of my support for the agenda you are pitching. Be strong, Mr. President.

It well might be that the obstructionists in Congress will realize they are harming their own base. As you know, these tactics have this way of exacting revenge on those who enact them.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Keep eyes on Empower Texans

I want to issue a stern warning to Texas residents. It is to keep all eyes on a group of political radicals that is likely feeling its Wheaties right about now.

Empower Texans is going to get involved in legislative races again this year just as it has done in several election cycles. This group presents a clear and present danger to our way of life.

I have been able to watch these clowns seek to unseat solid Republican legislators in Texas. Republicans are their targets in the primary season. Why? Because some GOP legislators aren’t conservative enough to suit these nut jobs.

So, Empower Texans recruits candidates to challenge solid GOP lawmakers, hoping to knock enough of them off to be able to steer the legislative agenda in the next Legislature.

They have been active in conservative corners of the state, such as the Panhandle. Empower Texans has drawn a bead for many years on state Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo, a man I know well. In 2018, Empower Texans recruited two far-right wingers to challenge Seliger; the senator fended them off in the primary and won that race without having to go to a runoff.

Empower Texans also went after state Rep. Four Price, another Amarillo lawmaker, a young man who has become a rising star in Texas politics. ET found a guy from Fritch to challenge Price, but he got smoked in a head-to-head primary matchup.

Seliger isn’t running this year. He’s done. Seliger has engaged in one too many disputes with arch conservatives in the Senate, starting with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, with whom he has had a testy relationship ever since Patrick got elected to preside over the Senate in 2014.

Empower Texans will seek to unseat reasonable Republicans in the ensuing primary season and replace them with American First knock-off GOP pretenders.

These clowns give me great concern, as Texas already is tilting too far to the right to suit my political taste. We need to stave off this push to move one of our two major parties onto the far-right fringes of political thought.

Women’s reproductive rights appear to be a lost cause. However, we need to protect public education, the quest for renewable energy sources and a judicial system capable of showing some compassion.

Empower Texans presents a clear and present danger to what is left of reasonable political thought in this state.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Still hoping for results

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

You can count me as one ardent supporter of President Biden who is still waiting for him to deliver on his multi-pronged pledge to repair the national soul, unify the United States of America and enact legislation that will deal with the existential threats to our great country.

We’re almost a year into Joe Biden’s term as president. I want him to succeed.

Do I blame him singularly for the problems that seem woven into our national fabric? No. I want to lay most of the blame on the obstructionists in Congress who won’t work with the president, who continue to block every initiative that comes from the White House simply because they can.

Too many Republicans appear wedded to the notion that the 2020 election was stolen from their guy. It wasn’t. Yet they won’t let it go. They refuse to accept the truth of the result: 81 million Americans voted for Joe Biden, granting him 306 Electoral College votes. It wasn’t a smashing triumph, but it was decisive enough for there to be no doubt as to the outcome.

The pandemic has flared yet again. It has hampered Biden’s agenda. It has cast a pall over damn near everything. I cannot possibly blame the president for that, either.

The next year is as unpredictable as the first year has been. I don’t know what the future holds. We have a midterm election coming up. Republicans say they are poised to take control of Congress. What happens if that occurs? Will there be more revenge in store? I sincerely hope not.

Then again, we’re dealing with a party controlled by an individual who cannot concede defeat.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com