Tag Archives: MAGA

national news

Pure nonsense!

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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

Uncategorized

Pulling for Democrats

I cannot hide my partisan leanings, so I wonā€™t even try to pretend I am so politically neutral that I donā€™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 todayā€™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 ā€œestablishment Republicanism.ā€ 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 ā€œmake America great again.ā€™

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 Oā€™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 heā€™s up once more ā€¦ it might be his final run for statewide office.

I want Beto Oā€™Rourke to defeat Gov. Abbott, who has been a terrible disappointment to me as the stateā€™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.

Itā€™s clear to me that Republicans arenā€™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

 

national news

Right wingers win the argument … so far

This is no great flash to those who are smarter than I am, but I have concluded how the right wingers out there are able to outshout the rest of us in this so-called “battle of ideas.”

They succeed because they appeal to Americans’ base instincts. We are so very quick to criticize those in power. The right wingers, therefore, are appealing to Americans’ lowest common denominator. It is fueled by ignorance.

Thus, when I see President Biden’s diminishing approval ratings in public polls, I see an opportunity for Biden’s supporters to strike back … and hard!

The obvious consequence will be that the quality of the political debate will sink faster a cruise ship that hits an iceberg.

The equally obvious alternative is to let the MAGA crowd win the argument, which then will lead to MAGA candidates emerging victorious.

I do not want that to happen. I do want the reasonable center-left and even some “mainstream Republicans” to tear a page from the MAGA playbook … and then hit the far right wingers with the same demagoguery they have been pitching.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

GOP is capable of nominating weirdos, nut jobs

MAGA candidates are running amok in the Republican Party primary elections throughout the nation.

One or two MAGA goofballs are likely to be nominated for high public office by Republican voters in places such as Pennsylvania and North Carolina. There will be more of them.

They have earned the endorsement of Donald J. Trump — the MAGA in Chief.

My favorite candidate to earn the Trump seal of endorsement has to be Mehmet Oz, the one-time Dr. Oz who’s running for a U.S. Senate in seat in Pennsylvania. Get this: Oz doesn’t live in Pennsylvania. That didn’t matter one little bit to Trump, who gave Oz his endorsement because, I suppose, he’s a celebrity; Trump likes celebrities, right?

I’m not sure whether Trump’s anointing of Oz is going to work; he’s facing another MAGA-ite in Pennsylvania.

Republican voters have some key decisions to make. Do they want to throw their party over to the cult leader who keeps putting his ample ass into these primary fights?

Aww, hell. I don’t care if they do. Let them follow their cult leader over the cliff.

Trump is a menace to our governmental system simply by being on the fringes of a major party’s primary fight. Accordingly, it will fascinate me to no end to watch how the GOP primary season plays out.

Whether it becomes a MAGA haven or returns to semblance of its senses will depend on whether the voters have become intoxicated by the snake-oil swill served up by The Donald.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Rep. Jackson: shut up!

A strange thing has occurred — or it’s still occurring — as I continue to offer comment on a member of the Texas congressional delegation.

Republican Ronny Jackson represents the 13th District in the Texas Panhandle, where I lived for 23 years before my bride and I relocated in 2018 to the Metroplex.

I had been a bit hesitant to keep yapping about this right-wing blowhard. I mean, he was their congressman. I had my own right-winger — Van Taylor — to keep me occupied. Taylor, though, had a months-long affair with the former wife of an Islamic State officer, thus blowing a huge hole in his family-man image.

Well, Taylor is leaving Congress at the end of the year. Jackson is likely to be re-elected. He’s also becoming something of a national right-wing political figure, albeit for reasons that make my blood boil.

Jackson has become a darling of the right-wing media because he is so damn reckless, feckless and downtown stupid in his pronouncements about President Biden. He shows up on Fox News, on Newsmax and on One America Network to tell the audience that Biden is inept, incompetent and incoherent. The hosts nod approvingly and so Jackson goes on and on.

I believe he is nothing more than a right-wing dipsh**.

Ronny Jackson doesn’t know me from Adam. I only know of him through what I see on his Twitter feed and from reports of his appearances on the aforementioned right-wing media outlets.

Given that he has achieved some sort of national standing, though, I feel more comfortable telling readers of this blog what I think of his blathering.

I just want him to shut the hell up.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

MAGA this, MAGA that

Oh, how I find it so interesting the way some expressions take on lives of their own, how they become words suitable for conversation.

Take the word “MAGA.”

It’s an acronym, of course. It stands for Make America Great Again. The Donald Trump campaign for president in 2016 ran on that slogan. Trump managed to win in the biggest political fluke in U.S. history.

Since then, the term has become a noun and an adjective.

“I am going to a MAGA rally,” someone might say.

Or, “How about that MAGA sign?”

How about, “Can you believe the number of MAGAs out here?

The acronym as it’s pronounced does roll off the tongue. I prefer to avoid using it whenever possible. Except perhaps for purposes of making a point on my blog, which I am attempting to do at this moment.

To be candid, the term — and, more to the point, what its spell-out version tells us — just pisses me off. To say we are going to “make America great again” is to suggest the country has been less than great.

America is a great nation. It’s been great for a long time. We emerged from World War II as the planet’s pre-eminent military and economic power.

What’s more, the juxtaposition of MAGA in the presence of certain symbols fills me with rage. Picture a MAGA follower toting a Confederate flag or much worse, parading under a swastika. Do you get my drift? Good!

I get that Donald Trump’s campaign didn’t coin the phrase that has become an acronym. Bill Clinton said the same thing while campaigning for POTUS in 1992.

Still, it has taken on a life of its own. It’s become a dangerous metaphor for anger and paranoia.

It’s weird, man.

I just want to proclaim that the only time I use the term MAGA is to deride it … and those who adhere to it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Blowhards just piss me off

Congress is filling itself with too damn many right-wing blowhards, individuals who — at the moment they take their oaths of office — start spouting nonsense without giving a second thought to the consequence of their fiery rhetoric.

Sen. Rick Scott of Florida is the latest right-winger to blather garbage about the president of the United States who, I hasten to add, answers to a much greater constituency that any of the 100 men and women who serve in the Senate.

Scott said President Biden should resign. That he doesn’t have the snap to do the job. He joins other right-wing nut cases — such as Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas — to offer a medical diagnosis of the president without any actual personal contact with him.

Scott joined the Senate in 2019 after he defeated longtime Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. He pushed himself immediately in front of TV cameras. Scott is now some sort of spokesman for the MAGA caucus within the Senate.

He’s another dipsh**! Pure and simple.

Just so you need to be reminded, I have spoken negatively about left-leaning political wannabe superstars, too. I have scolded them for blathering too frequently without first paying their dues. So, spare me the “what about the Democrats” canard.

I just am sick and tired of the yammering from the far-right wing of a once great political party about an issue — namely the POTUS’s fitness — that does not exist!

Stick to what the hell you know, Sen. Scott.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Fox News takes needed hit

The liars at Fox News have been given notice by two of their contributors, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, that they ā€” the contributors ā€” will not tolerate the lies broadcast by Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson.

Goldberg and Hayes said they cannot stand with the network after it broadcast Carlsonā€™s special on the 1/6 insurrection. Carlson called it ā€œPatriot Purge,ā€ and according to Goldberg and Hayes ā€” two leading conservative thinkers and columnists ā€” the program was full of lies, distortions and unfounded conspiracy rumors. They wonā€™t be part of a network that allows such lying to go unchallenged.

Good for them.

To be honest, I didnā€™t watch it. I donā€™t need to watch what I know it contains. I have heard Carlson spew much of the trash I know he poured into the production of ā€œPatriot Purge.ā€

According to The Wrap:Ā Carlsonā€™s ā€œPatriot Purgeā€ has drawn sharp criticism since its launch, with the Anti-Defamation League calling on Fox News to cancel it. ā€œLetā€™s call this what it is: an abject, indisputable lie, and a blatant attempt to rewrite history,ā€ ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a letter addressed to Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch. Greenblatt expressed alarm that the ā€œfalse narrative and wild conspiracy theoriesā€ presented in ā€œPatriot Purgeā€ could ā€œsow further divisionā€ and possibly ā€œanimate violence.ā€

Fox News has given itself ample reason to be ashamed of itself. Carlsonā€™s phony documentary is just one more example of the lies that pour forth from a network that once boasted to be ā€œfair and balanced.ā€

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Will POTUS stay true?

Joe Biden made what I thought at the time — and I still do — was an earnest pledge to be “president for all Americans, even those who didn’t vote for me.”

Well, President Biden’s pledge could — and I hope it doesn’t — face a stern test down the line if something truly tragic happens in a congressional district represented by one of his more, um, ardent critics.

I refer to Rep. Ronny Jackson of Amarillo, the Republican elected from the 13th Congressional District of Texas, where my wife and I lived before we moved to the D/FW Metroplex in 2019.

Jackson has been on a relentless Twitter tirade against the president. He calls him unfit for office; he questions Biden’s mental acuity; he suggests that the president needs to take a cognitive test to prove his fitness. He has been openly skeptical about the legitimacy of Biden’s election; he has bought into The Big Lie. Dude’s been incessant.

So, what might happen? I don’t wish this on anyone in the 13th district, but just suppose …

A killer tornado rips through Amarillo. An EF-5 monster. Something that destroys huge swaths of the city. What is Rep. Jackson going to do then? Will he throw himself, on behalf of his constituents, at the mercy of the federal government, of which President Biden is the chief executive? Sure he will.

The president, though, will be duty- and honor-bound to make good on his pledge to serve all Americans. I have full faith that President Biden would make good on his pledge.

If only the congressman from my former place of residents would cease with the moronic Twitter taunts … you know?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

We do not need POTUS 45 in office

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have believed this for some time, but it needs to be said anyway.

U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Amarillo, is out of his fu**ing mind! He is nuts. Bonkers, Loony. Certifiably nuts.

He pushed out a Twitter note this morning in which he said that the 45th president of the U.S. of A. “needs to return to the White House.”

Umm. No. He doesn’t. He needs to be committed, sent away, banished from the halls of power.

POTUS 45 is an existential threat to the government of the country he once led. He is a liar, an insurrectionist, a seditionist, a morally bankrupt con man.

But he’s got his friends in Congress. One of them is Rep. Jackson, who now represents the congressional district where I once lived.

These idiots deserve each other.