Tag Archives: MAGA

national news

So long, Mitt; I’ll miss you

Mitt Romney has decided to call it a career, announcing today he won’t seek re-election to another term in the U.S. Senate in 2024.

What am I supposed to think about that? Here’s what is crossing my mind at the moment.

The Utah Republican did not get my vote for president when he ran in 2012 against President Obama. Indeed, I didn’t much care for him when he sought to undo the good things Obama accomplished in his first term in office.

Then along came Donald Trump, the political party hijacker who commandeered the Republican Party and turned into something unrecognizable. Romney resisted Trump’s tug on the party and then called him out in 2016, referring to Trump as a “phony” and a “fraud.” Mitt Romney did not endear himself to the MAGA faithful who continue to hang onto Trump’s every dimwitted pronouncement.

Which leads to me to believe that Romney knew what stood before him in a 2024 re-election campaign … that the Trump acolytes would be targeting Romney for defeat.

Sen. Romney represents the “establishment” wing of the GOP, which is about to lose an articulate champion for what is left of a once-great political party.

national news

‘The Mayor’ has fallen farthest

It was striking to me as I watched the nation commemorate the 22nd year since the 9/11 attacks that one man was missing from all the ceremonies we saw.

At Ground Zero. At the Pentagon. At the field in Shanksville, Pa. Dignitaries noted the tragedy that befell the nation. They saluted the first responders. The spoke to the unity that brought Americans of all political stripes together.

Who was missing from all of this? The man we once hailed as “America’s Mayor,” Rudolph Giuliani has become persona non grata.

The more I think about it, the more I am left to conclude that no political figure has fallen farther and more dramatically than Giuliani in the 22 years since he burst on the American political scene simply by being a man of strength and dignity trying to rally New York City from the wreckage brought by the terrorists.

He would become Time’s Person of the Year in 2001 … and with great reason. He stood like a colossus over rubble where the Twin Towers once stood. Americans looked to him to provide strength that would feed the rest of us.

America’s Mayor delivered … in spades.

Now, though, he has become a ridiculous caricature of himself. He stands with a former POTUS who lost the 2020 election and proclaims that he actually won it. Giuliani has been indicted by federal and state grand juries. He is in danger of losing his law license.

Do I pity him? Do I lament his fall from the nation’s grace? Not for a second. The man made his choice willingly and I’ll presume with a clear head.

Given all the chaos that he engenders these days it would be the depth of folly for him to appear publicly to take part in events designed to remember the horrendous event that handed him the opportunity to stand tall.

America’s Mayor has become America’s Joke.

national news

MAGA cabal calls the shots

Kevin McCarthy made it official: He has instructed the relevant U.S. House of Representatives committee chairs to rev up an inquiry into whether to impeach President Biden.

Which begs this question: Is there a clearer demonstration than this of just who is calling the shots within the People’s House? It ain’t the speaker of the body, but rather it’s the MAGA moron cabal that forced him to act in this irresponsible manner.

Speaker McCarthy is in charge by the slimmest of margins in the House. He owes the speakership to the concessions he made to the MAGA cabal that wants this impeachment inquiry.

What are the charges? What high crime and misdemeanor has the president allegedly committed? Where will this inquiry go and how long will it last?

The MAGA morons want it to go through the next election cycle, keeping the heat on the president for as long as humanly possible.

We are about to witness a staggering abuse of power within the House of Representatives that could rival any such abuses we already have witnessed.

And why? For what reason? I believe I know.

It’s revenge for the twin impeachments leveled against Donald Trump … and it is disgraceful.

national news

No impeachment … OK?

Joe Biden doesn’t deserve to be impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives. If you don’t believe me, then you ought to heed the warnings of some prominent congressional conservatives.

The president is being targeted by the MAGA caucus of the House for unspecified “high crimes and misdemeanors.” What they are must be anyone’s guess.

But, by golly, the MAGA morons are proceeding with an impeachment inquiry, come hell or high water. One of them happens to be my North Texas congressman, freshman Keith Self of McKinney. Good grief, dude. Get a fu**ing grip!

Many conservatives, though, say that impeachment is a non-starter. They include Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Mike Lee of Utah, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

We all know what is driving this idiotic endeavor. It’s revenge against House Democrats who spearheaded two impeachments against a Republican who served as POTUS. That’s it!

Do we have a crime? Is there anything President Biden has done to deserve impeachment? Not … a … damn … thing!

media news

Media conspiracy? Non-starter!

As I listen to Donald Trump’s idiotic rants about “media conspiring” to keep him from being elected to public office, the more I am drawn to a piece of wisdom a newspaper editor once told me.

He said that publishing a newspaper each day was nothing short of “a miracle.” Which means to me that just getting a newspaper out the back door and onto people’s front porches each day required every bit of know-how an editor and his or her team of reporters could muster.

OK, let’s establish off the top that Trump doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Let’s also establish something else … which is that your blogger acquired a good bit of inside info on publishing a newspaper during the nearly 37 years I spent pursuing my craft.

When I cite the editor’s contention of a “modern miracle” occurring, consider all the things that could go wrong during the publication of a newspaper. The presses could explode; electricity could fail; storms could erupt; a reporter might die on deadline as he or she is writing the lead story for that day’s newspaper.

I have been accused of conspiring against portions of a community. I have told accusers the same thing every time: I don’t have time to conspire against anyone; I am too busy just getting a newspaper published to think about how to damage a segment of my community. My answer usually didn’t dissuade the accuser. Whatever …

But in the larger debate, the media have become targets of the MAGA morons who insist that they — the media — have the authority, the ability and the wherewithal to conspire against right-wingers.

B … S!

The nature of the craft I pursued simply made such conspiracies impossible. The editor who told me about the daily “miracle” was onto something. It takes a journalist every bit of intellectual firepower just to get his or her work out the door.

legal news, local news, State news

Lt. Gov. deserves props

Dan Patrick deserves a good word from this blogger today … for the way he is conducting the trial of his fellow Republican, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Patrick, of course, is the GOP Texas lieutenant governor who at the moment is presiding over Paxton’s impeachment trial. Patrick pledged to be impartial and non-biased when the Senate received the overwhelming impeachment articles from the Texas House.

I had harbored private doubts that Patrick could be faithful to his pledge. I was mistaken.

So very often in high-profile judicial or, in this case, quasi-judicial proceedings, the presiding judge seems to hog the spotlight. Example given? Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the so-called “trial of the century” in 1995 in the case of OJ Simpson and whether he killed his former wife and her friend.

Ito let the lawyers go on and on, ad nauseum, refusing to constrain them, which he could have done as the presiding judge.

Dan Patrick has been hardly mentioned in this first week of the Paxton trial. Which is a good thing. He has let the lawyers for Paxton and the House have the floor and has administered the proceedings efficiently and without bias.

Why was I concerned about Patrick? Hey, he’s a politician … and a gregarious one at that!

Whether this impeachment trial results in a conviction or an acquittal shouldn’t hinge on Patrick’s conduct as the presiding officer. That doesn’t appear to be the case and for that I, as a keenly interested Texas resident, am grateful.

national news

Polling data = real-time snapshot

All the polling data we are seeing these days showing a neck-and-neck race between President Joe Biden and the man he defeated in 2020 remind me of historical precedent.

Which is to say that today’s polling data don’t mean squat this far out from an upcoming election.

Yes, I have commented on my frustration that Donald Trump even can collect 35 to 40% of the electorate’s favor, given all he has said, done and demonstrated since he became a politician in 2015.

But I want to revisit some recent presidential polling history to remind you of how volatile these polls can become.

Remember that public opinion polls are merely a real-time snapshot of what is on people’s minds. Opinions change.

Prior to the 1984 election, Walter Mondale was seen as a legitimate challenger to President Reagan. The president was re-elected with an 18% margin and a 49-state Electoral College wipeout. In 1992, Ross Perot actually led President George H.W. Bush and former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Perot finished with 19% of the vote and zero Electoral College votes, while Bill Clinton breezed to election.

Four years later, Sen. Bob Dole was neck-and-neck with the president, but then lost decisively. In 2008, Sen. John McCain was seen as a possible winner against Sen. Barack Obama; it didn’t happen. Obama was in danger four years later of losing to Mitt Romney; he won comfortably.

Today’s polling data mean next to nothing. Trump is going on trial on at least two of the indictments leveled against him prior to the GOP primary season. Americans are going to get a snootful from courtrooms about the way he conducted himself during his time in office and, most damaging, after he lost the 2020 election.

I am going to stand squarely on my view that Donald Trump is not electable in 2024. Period. He has no vision for the future, other than telling us how he intends to exact revenge on his foes. His unfitness for public office cannot be stated any more starkly than that.

The polling data will be there to remind us … in real time.

national news

Who is this new carnival barker?

Who in the world is Vivek Ramaswamy, who I believe is trying to emerge as the Republican Party’s new snake-oil vendor of choice?

Dude is 38 years of age. He’s never held a public office. I don’t yet know how he acquired his wealth … I’ll have to look it up. He talks some wild game about opposing further aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and then says Donald Trump’s actions on 1/6 were “abhorrent” but he remains in Trump’s camp if the twice-impeached, four-times indicted former POTUS gets nominated by the GOP next summer.

Ramaswamy is weird, man.

This political newbie might be making some waves among Republican base voters, aka the MAGA morons on the far-right wing of a once-great political party.

What part of Ramaswamy’s background concerns me the most? It might be his lack of political exposure or experience. We saw what happened the last time Americans elected such an individual. He shot off his mouth and got impeached for seeking a political favor from a foreign head of state; he got impeached again for inciting the mob to storm the Capitol Building to stop the counting of Electoral College votes after the 2020 presidential election.

Do we want to hand another political neophyte the nuclear launch codes?

Hmmm … hell no!

military news, national news

Sen. Tuberville: No. 1 dumbass

Congress has been populated over its more than two centuries of existence by many dumbasses and … yes, I will stipulate that they come from both sides of the partisan aisle.

However, the No. 1 dumbass in the Senate happens to be a Republican, a former major college football coach and an idiot who is spitting in the faces of the men and women who deserve nothing but respect from the people who serve in our government.

Sen. Dumbass is Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, whose one-man blockage campaign has held up the promotions of dozens of senior officers and denied the Marine Corps of being led by a commandant for the first time in the Corps’ history.

Why is that? Because Sen. Dumbass says the military allows women who serve to obtain abortions, in addition to any of the other reproductive health care issues that need attention.

Dumbass’s campaign has put the nation’s military preparedness in jeopardy. He is denying the military its full complement of general-grade officers because this foolish effort to deny those who serve the opportunity to obtain legally provided health care.

What the hell is happening to us? Imagine for just a moment what the Republican outcry would be if a Democrat was employing a one-senator rule to block appointments in the military because of a policy disagreement. Senate rules empower one senator with the authority to act as Sen. Dumbass has done.

The very idea that a Republican senator is laying waste to the military high command is enough to send many of us into a frenzy.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is set to retire next month. Will Sen. Dumbass block Gen. Milley’s successor from ascending to the Joint Chiefs chair? What in the world must this be doing to morale among the soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and Coast Guardsman and women we ask to defend us?

Sen. Dumbass needs to stand down and let our armed forces do their jobs.

local news

Wishing the best, but concerned …

Oh, how I want to give Keith Self the benefit of the doubt as he settles more firmly into his new public office: as a congressman representing the Third Congressional District of Texas.

Self is my elected representative, which means I have some skin in the game he is playing while seeking to earn his spurs as a junior member of the House of Representatives.

I have heard a good bit already from this former Collin County judge. To be candid, I am a bit alarmed that he’s bitten from the fruit offered by the MAGA-inspired, Freedom Caucus wing of the Republican Party.

He admitted at a meeting I attended the other day he voted for fire-breather Jim Jordan to be House speaker in order to get the eventual Man of the House, Kevin McCarthy, to agree to demands made by the MAGA crowd. McCarthy eventually buckled and the far-right-wingers who opposed McCarthy came around. Self was one of them.

He wants the House to inquire into whether to impeach President Biden. It made me go: What? Why? For what reason? He also is concerned that McCarthy might pull impeachment inquiry off the table, which is a non-starter in the Book According to Self. As we learned during Donald Trump’s twin impeachments, those who favor an inquiry generally want to take the next step. So … I’ll put Rep. Self in the category of congressmen and women who want to impeach the president.

To what end? For what good cause? It’s a mystery to me.

I was one of those North Texans who was quite sure that former Rep. Van Taylor of Allen would be re-elected in 2022. Silly me. I didn’t expect Taylor — a Republican — to end his campaign after revealing he had engaged in an affair with a woman once married to an officer of the Islamic State.

Self and Taylor were set to face each other in a GOP runoff. Taylor’s withdrawal handed the nomination to Self, who then defeated his Democratic opponent.

One thing that seems apparent to me is that Self will not follow the path forged by Taylor, who prided himself in working with Democrats, seeking consensus on ideas he hoped would lead to legislation.

But … it’s still early in Keith Self’s new career. Maybe he can find some bipartisan “religion” that can please skeptics such as me.