Tag Archives: GOP

national news

Cheney ouster remains a mystery

It’s going to take a few more decades — probably more than I have left on this Earth — for historians to sort out what the hell happened to former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney in the 2022 Republican Party primary.

Cheney was as conservative a member of Congress as one could find. Yet she revealed a so-called open wound when she argued that the 45th POTUS was unfit for the office he once held.

He punishment was to be voted out of office overwhelmingly in the 2022 GOP primary.

Cheney voted with POTUS 45 about 93 % of the time. She opposed gun control legislation, she was adamantly pro-life on abortion, she favored low taxes, opposed burgeoning budget deficits, favored deportation of undocumented immigrants.

Cheney was the embodiment of the MAGA movement.

Then came No. 45’s behavior on 1/6. It appalled Cheney.

The MAGA cultists just couldn’t let her anti-45 view go.

Do you want a primer on why the upcoming election is so important? You need look no further than Wyoming, where Republican voters ousted a solidly conservative lawmaker who did her constituents’ bidding.

Except for that one matter involving a lawless president.

Donald Trump, national news, political news

Bannon blathers the ‘truth’?

Steve Bannon’s blatherings normally run into one of my ears and out the other, given that I don’t trust the guy as far as I can throw him.

However, when the former inside man in the POTUS 45’s administration says what he says about what Republicans prefer in the 2024 presidential race, well, I tend to perk up.

Bannon believes most GOP members of Congress want the ex-POTUS to lose to President Biden later this year.

Why is that? Because the former Idiot in Chief is a loser and he would bring other Republicans down with him. We saw it happen in the 2020 election and in the 2022 midterm balloting. POTUS 45’s endorsements were poison to GOP candidates and they want him gone from the scene … according to Bannon.

You know what? I’ll go along with what ol’ Steve says on this one. I just hope his version of the “trick knee” doesn’t let him down.

If only some of these Republicans would get off their duffs and work to defeat the one-time commander in chief.

local news, political news

Cruz needs to be shown the door

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Of all the men and women I have watched in politics over many years as a journalist and now as a civilian with a keen interest in public policy, Ted Cruz stands tall among them as the most loathsome.

The junior U.S. senator from Texas keeps getting sliced and diced by the state’s largest newspaper — his hometown sheet, in fact — over this and that policy issue. The Houston Chronicle has peeled the bark off Cruz’s backside most recently over his blocking of high-speed Internet service coming to Texas.

But in reality, the Cruz Missile is now trying to rebrand himself as a bipartisan senator, someone with Democratic friends and colleagues. My goodness … this guy is utterly without shame.

He has spent the bulk of his nearly dozen years in the Senate doing two things: trying to advance his own political ambition and trashing Democrats at every opportunity.

He damn near lost his first re-election bid in 2018. Now he’s facing another Democrat who’s abandoning his House seat to challenge him. The foe this time is Colin Allred of Dallas.

Oh, how I want Allred to win. I want another senator who can work with pols on the other side of the still-great chasm. Our state’s senior senator, John Cornyn of San Antonio, at times shows promise in steering clear of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.

Cornyn needs a partner in that bipartisan effort. From my vantage point, it doesn’t appear to me that Ted Cruz is wired in that manner.

Which is precisely why I want Colin Allred to give Ted Cruz the boot in the backside.

local news, political news, State news

Cruz seeks to rebrand himself … yeah, right

Rafael Edward Cruz, aka Ted Cruz, is trying to pull off the biggest rebranding effort in U.S. Senate history.

The Republican firebrand now calls himself a “bipartisan” member of the Senate, citing his working relationship and friendship (if you dare believe that) with leading Senate Democrats.

It’s a joke, I’m tellin’ ya. Except that I ain’t laughing at it … except perhaps in derision.

Cruz is in for another tough re-election fight, this time against Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas, who — according to many leading polls — is in a dead heat with the two-term senator. Cruz was first elected in 2012, then won a bitter re-election battle in 2018 against former Rep. Beto O’Rourke by about 3 percentage points.

Ted Cruz angles for a bipartisan rebrand | The Texas Tribune

Allred, serving his second term in the House, has established a bipartisan reputation in the lower chamber and says Cruz’s effort is a bald-faced sham. Allred told the Texas Tribune: “I don’t think Ted Cruz is fooling anybody,” Allred said. “He spent 12 years being the most divisive — and proudly so — partisan warrior in the United States. And I think it’s kind of laughable actually that at this point, when he’s in a close race, that he wants to now stress, ‘Oh, actually I have been working in a bipartisan way.’”

He’s nothing like the bipartisan statesman he is portraying himself to be. Recall how he filibustered in the Senate in trying to kill the Affordable Care Act. He has been a front-row election denier, questioning the validity of the 2020 presidential election that gave us Joe Biden as president. He has been virtually silent about the 1/6 assault on our government and has endorsed the 45th POTUS’s bid to win back the White House after losing to President Biden in 2020.

According to the Tribune: “When I first arrived in the Senate 12 years ago, there was such a thing as moderate Democrats. They existed. You could work them,” Cruz said at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Texas Policy Summit last month. “There aren’t any left. The Democrats, they hate Trump so much their brains have melted, and what’s happened is they have gone crazy off the edge to the left.”

Now he wants us to believe he’s willing to work with Democrats whose “brains have melted”?

Hah!

crime news, national news, political news

Let the trial begin … and end

Eight days from now a judge in New York City is going to bang a gavel and call for the beginning of a trial.

It won’t be an ordinary trial. The criminal defendant will be a former president of the United States. He will make history by being the first ex-POTUS ever to stand trial.

The ex-POTUS has three more trials awaiting him once this one concludes. The others are more consequential in terms of the charges leveled against him. First things first, though.

The NYC trial is going to take the former POTUS off the campaign trail for as long as it takes to reach a conclusion. He’ll be in court listening to testimony alleging how he misused campaign funds to pay off an adult film actress to keep quiet about a one-night stand the two of them had, but which the former POTUS said didn’t happen.

Go figure.

The defendant cut a check for the actress totaling 130 grand to shut her up.

This might not be the biggest legal deal facing the former POTUS. Still, it’s pretty damn big. District Attorney Alvin Bragg has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did what has been alleged. It’s a criminal case, after all, so the bar is set high.

I will not shy away from — or apologize for — my hope that DA Bragg delivers the goods to the jury that will decide this matter. I want the former POTUS to be convicted of the crime that has been alleged. I also want him locked up and kept out of public view. He is an existential menace to the nation he seeks to lead once more.

God help us if there are enough stupid Americans out there to put him back into the Oval Office.

In many crucial ways, this is the most important trial in U.S. history. It’s going to make for the highest political drama any of have ever witnessed.

national news, political news

How does he maintain this grip?

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The afterlife awaits every one of us, as no one gets out of here alive.

When my day arrives — and I hope for damn sure it’s no time soon — I will head there with many political questions jostling through my noggin.

Chief among them will be trying to grasp how the 45th POTUS manages to maintain the grip he has secured around the throats of the MAGA cult he has created.

To be sure, it’s seemingly not as large a cult as it once was, but it’s every bit as vocal. The cultists so far are outshouting the rest of the Republican Party faithful … and I mean to say the “real Republicans” who cannot seem to shake loose the grip that the former Liar in Chief has on the MAGA crowd.

My belief in the goodness of humanity is being challenged daily by the ignorance demonstrated by those who glom onto the moron’s every statement. Even when he mangles words or confuses individuals (such as when he recently confused Joe Biden with Barack Obama), they still whoop and holler. Go … figure, man.

I will have to dish out some off-handed praise to the former Idiot in Chief. He has found the audience that adheres to his nonsense, and he speaks plainly to them in a language that only they seem to comprehend.

The rest of us?

We’re left in the dark … and the candidate doesn’t give a sh**!

media news, national news

NBC pulls its head out

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Just when I thought the world was going to hell, a major TV network has delivered the goods and thought better about a horrible hiring decision it had made.

NBC News withdrew its decision to hire former Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel as an on-air political contributor.

I want to stand and cheer out loud! So … I will.

You see, NBC erred in hiring McDaniel after the former party chair had been complicit in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election; after she denied President Biden had been elected fairly; after she promoted The Big Lie put forth by the 2020 Republican Party presidential nominee.

She is far from just someone who once led a major political party. She is a purveyor lies and deception. That a TV network would put her on the air to offer political commentary was just too much to swallow. It drew tremendous blowback from its own employees and journalists everywhere.

The network today thought better of its own stupidity … and pulled Ronna McDaniel’s name off the table.

media news, national news, political news

Can it get worse for speaker?

I have asked a question in the headline atop this post that I believe I can answer.

Yes. It can get worse. It seems to be worsening daily for U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose majority in the congressional chamber is now down to a single member. Meaning that the dude has virtually no governing majority.

Johnson is facing an insurrection — if you’ll pardon the use of the term — within his own party. The MAGA caucus led by Marjorie Taylor Greene wants him booted out. The reason escapes me. The guy is one of them! Still, MTG wants him gone, but hasn’t yet taken the final legislative step to get him removed, which would be to call for a vote of House members.

GOP congressmen are fleeing the chamber. Ken Buck of Colorado said so long, saying he can’t work in such a chaotic atmosphere.

The late Sen. John McCain used to demand that the Senate follow “regular order.” He should have spoken those words to the House, too. Regular order establishes a procedure for legislating that can seem boring, cumbersome and arcane. It sure beats the hell out of the madness we are witnessing these days with MAGA nitwits blathering constantly about how the House cannot allow Democrats to have any say in how the place functions.

The MAGA clowns are not interested in governing. Their only interest appears to be seeing their names in bold print in headlines across the country.

Speaker Johnson is presiding over all of this. He cannot control the House. The MAGA cultists are running amok and are running roughshod over the guy they chose when they booted his immediate predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, out of the speaker’s office.

Boy howdy, Mike Johnson is occupying the worst political office in D.C. It’s likely to get even worse.

crime news, national news

Pardon the mobsters? Really?

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Of all the campaign promises the presumed Republican Party presidential nominee has said, the hands-down deal breaker came when he pledged to issue a presidential pardon to all the criminals who stormed the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021.

So help me Almighty God in heaven, I cannot fathom how this moron can say such a thing. I cannot grasp, moreover, the mindset of those MAGA cultists who continue to endorse the view that these traitors are “hostages” being held by the federal government.

The fall campaign has begun in earnest. The former president has acquired enough GOP delegates to be nominated to run against President Biden, who’s also reeled in enough delegate votes to win the Democratic Party nod.

Indeed, that the Republicans still would even nominate this idiot makes me wonder aloud what has happened to a once-great, once-viable, once-legitimate political organization. It has been captured and “held hostage” — to borrow a phrase — by the dipsh** who is poised to be nominated for the third election cycle in a row.

The entire world witnessed what happened on 1/6. The crowd stormed into the Capitol, smashed windows, attacked D.C. police officers, defecated on the floor of our federal government, brandished signs calling for the lynching of Vice President Pence.

And yet …

We have supposedly serious individuals telling us the mob was behaving peacefully?

The 45th POTUS could have stopped the assault. He didn’t. He allowed it to continue. Now he vows to pardon those who have been arrested and in many cases convicted of felonies?

The former Liar in Chief is getting some pushback from the former chair of the GOP, Ronna Romney McDaniel, who said that as RNC chair, she had to “take one for the team.” Now, she said she is able to “be myself” as a former party chair.

What utter crap!

The former POTUS has sown the seeds of anarchy within the once-great political party.

The list of reasons why this moron should never be elected POTUS is long and getting longer. For my money, the pledge to pardon the traitors who sh** on the Capitol floor is more than enough reason — all by itself — to reject this idiot’s lunacy.

national news

Shut the hell up, MTG!

A follower of High Plains Blogger has posited an interesting theory on how we might rid ourselves of the nonsensical blather that flies out of the mouths of inexperienced members of Congress.

This individual writes: ” … perhaps it’s time for us to have some actual criteria other than residency and age in order to run for a seat in Congress (or the presidency). Perhaps some relevant education and experience would be nice? And I am all for making them take a lie detector test before taking their oath of office!”

Fascinating, yes? Well, I think so. I will add this caveat, though, to what this reader believes we should do: We already are able to judge candidates’ educational and professional backgrounds before decided for whom to vote.

The person under discussion happens to be one of the MAGA queens of Congress, Margorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia. She is running for just her third term in Congress. She was elected in 2020 and re-elected in 2022. Third time’s a charm perhaps to get her booted out of Congress?

The voters in her rural northeast Georgia district seem to know enough about her to give her a pass on the idiocy that keeps pouring forth from her pie hole.

She wants to boot Speaker Mike Johnson out of his office. Why? Beats me, other than he works with Democrats on occasion to prevent a government shutdown. That’s the “sin” he reportedly commits; he’s not loyal enough to the MAGA movement.

Greene is a politician in search of a stage, any stage to provide her a forum to be seen and heard far beyond her congressional district. She hasn’t authored a single piece of significant legislation. She makes herself known by her antics during presidential speeches to Congress and her behavior at committee hearings.

Of course, and this really goes without saying, a lie detector test never will occur. There must be something in the Constitution that prohibits that kind of restriction on pols running for Congress.

But, boy howdy, it is a tempting thought nevertheless.