Tag Archives: MAGA

media news

Obama: What if I did this?

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Barack Hussein Obama, speaking to a crowd of college students the other day, raised a fascinating subject out loud.

The 44th president of the United States wondered, “What if I did any of this?” He explained himself. “What if I had banned Fox News” from the White House briefing room? The outcry from the right, he said, would be vociferous.

He is correct. What’s more, the right would have been justified in expressing anger at a president banning a media organization from access it was giving to other such media outlets.

Then he went on. He noted how Donald Trump has banned some news outlets that have been critical of his policies from access to White House sources. “It’s not a partisan issue,” President Obama said. “It’s about who we are as a culture,” he added.

Indeed, the very people who would be angry as hell at a Democratic president doing such an outrageous thing have grown silent as their guy, Trump, seeks to silence The Associated Press, CNN and MSNBC as they seek to cover the events dictated by the current president.

Obama also noted that “a good many of my predecessors” would be aghast at what is transpiring these days within the White House now run by Trump, the MAGA morons who back him and Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth.

Trump has declared his desire to see MSNBC taken apart. By whom or what, he doesn’t say. The implication, though, is clear. He wants to sic the government on the left-leaning network. Trump, who is astonishingly ignorant of the Constitution, seemingly doesn’t know that the First Amendment declares that a “free press” must be kept free of any government interference.

President Obama was spot on in delivering his rhetorical question. He is right to question aloud where we are as a culture that allows people to accept as normal the machinations of a wildly out-of-control chief executive who exhibits every sign imaginable of wanting to run this country as a dictator.

economic news

Do the math, Donald!

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Well, that was quite a day … don’t you think? The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened today in the tank per usual the past few days.

Then Donald Trump announced he would suspend tariffs levied against most nations for 90 days … except for China. What happened next was a rally for the books.

The DJIA launched itself into heavens, closing up nearly 3,000 points. The Standard and Poors 500 finished even stronger percentage-wise.

What does all of this say about Trump’s tariff tempest? It tells me that investors who control people’s retirement accounts, their livelihoods, and their run-around funds think ill of the notion of penalizing Americans because the president of the USA doesn’t understand the damage tariffs do here at home.

Trump’s tariffs would raise the cost of damn near everything we buy, given that we are a nation that imports so many essential goods, services and commodities.

Investors have good reason to be skittish over Trump’s unilateral — and unprovoked — trade war against our closest allies and trading partners. If investors are squeamish about it, think of how all of this affects people like you and me.

And do you believe Trump has any interest in protecting the interests of those he was elected to govern? If he stalls implementation of the tariffs and seeks better trade deals with our partners, then I’ll cling to a glimmer of hope that he does care.

However, I am not betting the farm on it.

economic news

Yeah, I’m tired of ‘winning’

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Donald Trump’s version of “winning” bears no resemblance to what the rest of us think of the term.

He insists America’s unprovoked trade war that has spread across the planet like a Texas prairie wildfire has earned the respect and admiration of our allies.

Um, Earth to Donald: No. It hasn’t.

Canada has vowed to retaliate. So has Mexico. We start with our two closest neighbors and two of our most reliable trading partners, and it only worsens beyond that.

The European Union is aghast that Trump would impose steep tariffs on goods imported from France, the UK, Italy and Germany. What’s a bottle of wine going to cost now that Trump has imposed steep tariffs on that item?

Here’s the bitterest irony of all the international reaction. Russia, Turkey and Hungary – nations all run by ham-handed dictators and thugs – aren’t feeling the tariff pinch the way our traditional allies are feeling it. Why is that? It must be that Trump so deeply admires dictators, so much so that he is exhibiting signs of becoming one himself.

And yet the POTUS keeps yapping about the “winning” strategy of declaring economic war on our allies. He says they’ll come around to seeing it our way. Really, dude?

It’s looking all more likely to this old man’s eyes that our allies are fed up to here – and you can determine where “here” is – with Trump’s ignorant push for tariffs that only punish Americans.

Am I tired “winning”? Yeah, I am sick and tired of it in terms that Donald Trump applies it.

education news

Public ed faces the axe

The Texas public education system is about to feel the budget axe as the Legislature prepares to approve a school voucher plan and send it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk for his signature.

What a crock of steer manure!

House Speaker Dustin Burrows says the House has enough votes to approve a measure that would allow the state to siphon off public education money and set it aside for parents to use to pay for private education for their children.

Burrows, a Lubbock Republican, is serving his first term as House speaker. I had a glimmer of hope he might have followed the lead of two former GOP speakers — Dade Phelan and Joe Straus — in resisting this gutting of public education.

Frankly, the move to gut public school districts of money runs totally counter to traditional Republican support in rural areas of the state. Many communities represented in Austin by GOP lawmakers, depend on healthy and vibrant public school systems to hold their towns together.

Those systems will be deprived of funds they need from taxpayers’ pockets once this goofy idea becomes law.

Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and many MAGA Republican lawmakers are dead set on depriving public schools of the money they need to strengthen themselves and provide quality education to our public school children.

My wife and I brought two sons into this world and they attended Texas public schools until the early 1990s. I believe they both received good educations that enabled them to attend and graduate from higher education institutions. They both have flourished in their professional lives as a result.

I only can hope that future generations of Texas kids can enjoy the fruits of a solid public education. I don’t feel good about where the state is going.

Donald Trump, national news

Move over, President W.H. Harrison

I long have held the late President William Henry Harrison up as the model for setting the dubious record for making stupid presidential decisions.

Donald Trump is challenging President Harrison for that title.

Harrison’s stupidity manifested itself on inauguration day, March 3, 1841. It was bitterly cold in Washington, D.C. Harrison’s medical team warned him to bundle up before delivering his inaugural speech. He ignored the medical advice and stood in the cold rain for well past an hour droning on about whatever was the issue of the day.

He then caught pneumonia and was bed-ridden until April 4. That’s when he died. They swore in VP John Tyler.

Profoundly stupid on the president’s part, correct? Yes. It was.

Trump has been told by Nobel laureate economists on the left and the right that the tariffs he has imposed will be catastrophic. They will punish Americans who will pay exhorbitantly high prices for goods and commodities imported from abroad. They will do little harm that Trump intends to inflict on the exporting nations.

But … he imposed the tariffs anyway. He has put millions of Americans’ livelihood in potentially dire peril. He launched without apparent provocation and international trade war that includes some of our strongest, most reliable and faithful allies and trading partners. Such as Canada, Mexico, France, Australia and Japan.

Yes, the dumbass in chief has decided to declare economic war on the entire planet apparently believing he is going to strengthen our hand in the world market.

Well, President Harrison’s stupidity had an obvious negative impact on his personal health and well-being. Donald Trump’s stupidity will reverberate all across Planet Earth.

Step aside, W.H. Harrison. You have company in the pantheon of pitiful presidents.

business news, economic news

Trump inscribe’s hideous legacy

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What does it say about a U.S. president who hears from the top economists on Earth that a policy he is considering would bring unvarnished disaster for Americans’ life savings … but then goes ahead with the decision to proceed?

It tells me that the president is hellbent on inscribing his place as the worst president in U.S. history.

How in the name of economic sanity can Donald J. Trump impose tariffs on our closest allies and most reliable trading partners and then watch as retirement accounts vaporize in real time?

He has through executive action spurred an international trade war, guaranteed a huge spike in inflation, forced the nation into a negative economic growth pattern and cost Americans billions of dollars in their retirement accounts.

Where I come from, that makes Trump the worst president in the history of the republic.

He doesn’t take advice. He heeds only his overfed “gut” and his “hunch.” He seeks to punish nations for “ripping us off,” yet imposes tariffs on such economic giants as American Samoa and Vanuatu.

Yours truly’s retirement account is vanishing before my eyes. Why? Because the numbskull in chief doesn’t care one damn bit about protecting the people who pledged to protect when he took office.

national news, political news

Trump’s gone loony

Donald J. Trump has flipped that mass of hair on his noggin, gone ’round the bend, has become certifiably nuttier than a Snickers bar.

He says he is considering a way to seek a third term  in the only office he’s ever sought or held. How does he do that? He ain’t saying. Other Trumpkins are concocting ways to skirt around the U.S. Constitution, which has that 22nd Amendment that bars anyone from being elected more than twice to the presidency.

Trump’s been elected twice, to this nation’s ever-lasting shame.

He says “there are ways which you could do it,” meaning he can find a way to get elected a third time as POTUS.

It won’t happen.

Not in this or any lifetime any sane person can envision.

As I said already, Trump isn’t sane. He’s nuts. Bonkers. He’s also an old man who might not live to the end of the current term. He’ll be 83 at the end of the current term. Cognition? Looks like it’s beginning to slip … but that’s just me thinking out loud.

The framers made it difficult to amend the Constitution. They didn’t write a perfect governing document, but they were right to set the bar very high for changing amendments added to it.

The 22nd Amendment is on the books for keeps.

national news

Give these residents a break!

I am overwhelmed by the desire to speak out on behalf of a group of U.S. residents who are getting the short shrift in the current kerfuffle over immigration.

They number in the hundreds of thousands. Maybe even the millions.

They are individuals who came into this country in the custody of parents who sneaked in illegally. Many of them were babies, infants who needed mama’s milk to sustain them. They grew into pre-teens, then teenagers, then young adults and finally into full-grown adult human beings able to — and willing and capable — to contribute to the only society they know.

They are de facto Americans.

Texas is home to many of these individuals. They pay their taxes. They excel academically. A good number of these de facto Americans finish at or near the top of their academic classes. They make good livings, raising their families.

According to many Americans, though, they’re criminals. Why? Because they remained in this country illegally. Donald Trump wants to round them up and deport them. But … to where? The country of their birth. Never mind that these U.S. residents know nothing of their birth nation.

These folks are called Dreamers. They are living their dream by making a life in a country far removed from the deprivation they would suffer at home. They deserve to be treated humanely by the powers that be, not cast off as rubble the way Trump and his MAGA goons want to do.

I see the likes of Trump hit man Steven Miller yammer about deporting criminals and I want to puke. Many of these individuals who draw the ire of Miller and his ilk are seeking a chance to make it right. They want to forge a clear path to either permanent U.S. residency or citizenship. Whether they obtain a green card or a U.S. passport doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me.

I just want my government, which I pay for with my tax money, to show some heart and humanity to individuals many of whom have given more to the country of their choice than many of us have given to the country of our birth.

political news

Trump needs serious reality check

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Earth to Donald Trump: The nation’s founders, the men who crafted the government you were elected to lead, gave you limited power for a reason.

They didn’t want an imperial presidency in the United States of America.

Thus, Trump needs to comprehend that he cannot declare something to be and then expect it to occur.

He says he wants to take back the Panama Canal from Panama. He wants to purchase Greenland from Denmark. He wants Canada to become the 51st state of the United States.

The simple and undeniable fact is that Trump cannot possibly make any of that happen simply because he is the POTUS. Yet, he keeps blathering on with statements that defy all logic. They are utter nonsense. He has no authority anywhere to make any of it happen.

He declares media criticism of his antics to be “illegal.” He calls for the closing down of media outlets that present opinions with which he disagrees. He calls for the impeachment of federal judges … only to be scolded by the chief justice of the Supreme Court that impeachment is not an option for removal of judges who issue opinions at variance with Trump’s.

The dude is out of control. He is a maniac. He acts, talks and behaves with sheer stupdity.

However, Americans managed to elect this nimrod to the highest office in the land. Go … figure.

media news

News boycott continues

Hey, boys and girls, I have an announcement to make, which is that my daytime news boycott is continuing with no sign of letting up.

I mentioned some weeks back that I was turning the TV off for the forseeable future for a number of reasons.

One is that I am sick of hearing Donald Trump’s name mentioned. Two, the news talking heads aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know about or expect to know about him. Three,  I am enjoying the quiet in my North Texas home, with just my puppy Sabol and me making noise.

Truthfully, I have no interest in turning on the Fox Propaganda Channel and listen to those talking heads make excuses for Trump’s behavior or Elon Musk’s bullying of federal employees.

As for CNN and MSBNC, channels I normally tune into to learn the latest and the greatest news of the world, well, those folks are boring me with their repetitious recitals of what I already know about how those folks feel about POTUS No. 47 and his hired gun.

I am able to learn the important news as it develops. For instance, I learned of former heavyweight champion George Foreman’s death online. I learned about the wildfires in the Texas Hill Country and the savage wind that blew in the Panhandle.

So, the news that matters to me the most is getting through. I just don’t have the noise of voices blathering the same ol’-same ol’ through my house.

I’m going to keep it quiet around here for a good while longer.