Tag Archives: US Senate

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Come clean, old timer

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Mitch McConnell has a few million “bosses” in Kentucky who have every right to know whether he’s able to represent their interests in the U.S. Senate.

McConnell, who is more than 80 years of age, is hospitalized with an undisclosed illness. He’s been out of action for several weeks. His family isn’t talking about his condition. There actually has been some discussion that he might have died. I don’t think that’s the case.

But this matter brings to mind the issue of elderly men and women in public office and whether they are able to serve the public they were elected to represent. McConnell, the former Republican leader of the Senate, once was a formidable political figure who controlled legislative flow.

This matter spreads across party lines. You’ll recall how the late Diane Feinstein, a California Democrat, missed many months of votes in the Senate. She died from her ailments. Then we have the case of President Biden, who was running for re-election in 2024 when he stumbled badly during a debate with Donald Trump. Questions arose about the president’s mental acuity. Biden said he had all the snap he needed to govern, but he pulled out of his re-election effort.

McConnell’s condition needs to be dealt with openly by the senator. If he is incapable of speaking for himself, his bosses in Kentucky need to know. He is drawing a healthy six-figure salary to make decisions on behalf of the people of his state.

This matter won’t go away … until Mitch McConnell comes clean.

political news

Paxton didn’t get a mandate in that GOP runoff

Before the MAGA morons who supported Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Republican runoff victory over John Cornyn get too full of themselves, allow me to briefly put a this victory into some perspective.

Yes, the AG scored a decisive victory, beating the U.S. senator by 27 percentage points in the runoff. However, Paxton only tallied about 12,000 more votes in the runoff than he got in the GOP primary.

The runoff turnout fell into the basement compared to the already low primary turnout. That, by itself, is not unusual. Republicans, though, do not appear to be too enthused by someone topping their ticket who is so heavily damaged by political and personal scandal as Paxton.

Paxton’s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, is divorcing him on “biblical grounds,” which is a sort of shorthand for all extramarital affairs he’s had. His top legal aides blew the whistle on him for alleged unethical behavior. A Collin County grand jury indicted him on charges of securities fraud. Texas Republicans impeached him in the Texas House.

And so, Texas Democrats are licking their chops waiting for the fall campaign to begin. Their Senate candidate, state Rep. James Talarico, is a choir boy compared to the AG.

As for Sen. Cornyn, do you really believe he is going to campaign for the MAGA dipshit who defeated him?

national news

Yes, on ‘career pols’!

I am going to stand briefly and speak well of a sub-species of human beings who, in my view, are vilified too often simply because of the profession the choose to pursue.

I am talking about your run-of-the-mill “career politician.”

One of the latest victims of this ill-informed epithet happens to be U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who’s in the fight of his political life trying to fend off a challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who wants the seat Cornyn has occupied on Capitol Hill.

The TV ads Paxton is running refer to Cornyn derisively as a career politician. I am weary of that put-down of men and women who choose a career in public service.

I say this being well aware of the scoundrels among us who take more than they give back. There happen to career pols who are in it for themselves. We also have bankers, lawyers, insurance brokers and any number of private professions full of individuals who don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone other than themselves. Politicians, though, become fair game because they do so while collecting public money, taxpayers’ money, to do their jobs.

Think for a moment of those who forgo private-sector careers — where they could earn many times the salary they collect in public office — and choose instead to pursue less lucrative careeer in public life.

Don’t call me a Pollyanna because I choose to stand for those who serve the public. My eyes are open to what I know exists in the world of politics. I merely am trying to cling what is left of the nobility of a profession where its practitioners mean it when they take an oath to serve the public good.

legal news, national news

This election cycle? It’s the real deal!

Every election cycle possibly dating back to the beginning of our great republic has produced a comment from a candidate or a pundit that “this election is the most important in our nation’s history.”

Well, gang, I have news for you. The one coming up in November is the real thing. This one likely will determine the future of our republic. It will center on a candidate who won’t be on any ballot in any state. It will focus on the current occupant of the White House, Donald J. Trump.

He’s not up for a vote. In fact, he’ll never face the voters again. And for that we all should cheer loudly.

This election matters … a lot! The House of Representatives is likely to flip from Republican to Democratic control. The GOP is clinging to a majority that is virtually meaningless. It’s down to a seat or two or maybe three. Hell, I cannot keep track of it. GOP operatives are saying out loud what many others have said for about the past year: The Republican Party is going to get creamed! Every House seat is up for election. I don’t know what the latest forecasts are projecting, but I keep hearing a 30- to 50-seat swing from GOP to Democratic control.

Then there’s the U.S. Senate. Until just recently, it had been thought that flipping the Senate from GOP to Democrat was too steep a hill to climb. Suddenly, there is real belief that the Senate could be in play. North Carolina could flip. So could Maine. And get ready for this little nugget: Texas, the GOP bastion, could be in play as well.

Indeed, I have heard from some key Texas Republican strategists who suggest that Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico has a serious chance of seizing the Senate seat now held by Republican John Cornyn, who is in a runoff against the deeply flawed MAGA darling, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The economy is in the crapper. We’re at war with Iran. The POTUS keeps seizing power. Chaos pervades every executive branch agency.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a prescription building for a first-class electoral blowout. It won’t please every American. However, I would be thrilled beyond measure to see my government return to the art of governing.

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Talarico: the real Democratic deal!

James Talarico has emerged as the latest political star in Texas and he hopes to parlay his standing into a successful career in Congress.

The man has my support and I am about to explain why.

Talarico is a man of deep Christian faith. He wears his faith plainly and professes it from the campaign stump. He’s a Presbyterian seminary student and he has a graduate degree in economics. He’s a smart guy.

Talarico’s faith, though, carries an important caveat that he’s also proud to display. Talarico understands what the founders intended when they drafted the nation’s governing document. They intended to create a secular state free of religious influence. James Talarico gets it … and endorses the founders’ intention.

He has emerged as a fierce foe of Christian nationalists, those who seek to turn the U.S.A. into a Christian nation.

I guess I favor Talarico because he and I share the same view of the religion to which we both profess our faith. I practice my faith with enthusiasm, but am reluctant to shove it down the throats of others.

I want Talarico to succeed in his quest to win a U.S. Senate seat. If he defeats Sen. John Cornyn in the fall, I suspect it will occur because voters have grown weary of D.C.-centered politicians like Cornyn passing laws we all must follow. If he manages to beat Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, it well might be because Texans are disgusted with the way Paxton has conducted himself in the decade he has served in statewide elected office.

Talarico is a new breed of Texas Democrat, which in its way mirrors the way Democrats here used to present themselves.

The Democratic Senate nominee has time to refine his message, to fine-tune the manner in which he intends to deliver it. I also want him to ensure to keep the many promises he no doubt will make as he travels the length and breadth of this great state.

Many of us are waiting, James Talarico.

national news, political news

How can they govern?

You’ve heard me yammer until my puss turns blue about the need to restore collegiality in Congress.

Well, the folks who “represent” us in Washington aren’t listening to little ol’ me. In fact, it’s getting worse one congressional committee hearing at a time.

Congress keeps summoning Donald Trump administration officials to Capitol Hill to tell the public what they know about this and/or that decision. Administration chieftains dummy up. They don’t answer questions. They instead draw the ire of critics who want them to answer yes or no questions. Sen. Adam Schiff of California recently squared off with Attorney General Pam Bondi over a litany of unanswered questions. Bondi responded by asking Schiff whether he attended law school. Spoiler alert: Yes, he did … and practiced law before entering the political world of rough and tumble.

I say all this as someone who has watched political adversaries joust and jeer at each other in the middle of stern debate. When they heard the last call in either the House or the Senate, though, they would leave the floor and have dinner or a drink with each other. I once heard an anecdotal tale of Sens. John Tower and Hubert Humphrey arguing over a policy matter until they ran out of breath while conducting business. Tower, a Republican from Texas, and Humphrey, a Democrat from Minnesota, then walked off the Senate floor arm in arm.

Weird, yes? Well, yeah … especially since both sides always found room to compromise and then get things done.

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!

national news

Corruption gets new poster boy

Political corruption has displayed many faces over many decades as politics has been practiced in the United States of America.

The latest face now just might belong to a New Jersey Democratic U.S. senator, Bob Menendez. The federal government has indicted Menendez and his wife, Nadine, on charges that they took bribes.

Here’s what is so astonishing: FBI agents searched the couple’s home and found gold bars and cash-stuffed envelopes hidden in clothing in the couple’s closet. Oh, and get a load of this: Agents discovered that many of the envelopes had Menendez’s name on them … implying strongly that, well, the cash was placed there for nefarious purposes. The loot totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars!

The question that goes far beyond the Menendez scandal deals with just how widespread is this kind of behavior. I won’t believe it is endemic among politicians. Although as it involves a guy who has faced questions such as this before, I am struck by the alleged hubris Sen. Menendez has exhibited.

Pressure is mounting for Menendez to resign. It is coming from Democrats, which tells me that the New Jersey lawmaker has — shall we say — zero friends/allies in the Senate. He cannot continue to work effectively representing New Jersey residents while also voting on laws that affect all of Americans. He needs to go!

There also needs to be some serious soul-searching among pols, along with those who support our pols. This level of corruption simply cannot be allowed to stand.

The problem that awaits? Preventing this kind of bald-faced greed remains arguably the most awesome task awaiting those who remain in office.

national news

Keep the dress code!

My old-fashioned streak is beginning to show itself over the debate emerging on the dress code that is being relaxed because one of our 100 senators just doesn’t like to wear a tie, slacks and a sport coat while he’s at work on the Senate floor.

Senate majority leader Charles Schumer wants the code relaxed because Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., doesn’t like the dress code.

I admit to being a fuddy-duddy when it comes to dressing respectably while doing the people’s business. I do not accept that Fetterman’s desire to work in a hoodie, shorts and sneakers must be the new normal for the Senate.

This happens in my mind to be an absurd reaction.

The dress code isn’t codified. There is no punishment under the law if a senator chooses to dress “casually” at work. The rules have been in place for a long time and until right now it rarely has come under examination.

We see some House members occasionally wearing just shirts and a tie while conducting committee business. Here again, why not just throw on a jacket and look the part of a serious lawmaker?

I am having trouble grasping why this is even a discussion topic. To my way of thinking, it all seems just plain silly.

local news, political news

How does he get elected?

One of the key questions I have difficulty answering involves the junior U.S. senator from Texas … Raphael Edward Cruz.

Friends from all over the country keep asking me: How does this guy keep getting elected? 

I presume they’re asking in good faith, given his outspoken and often outlandish statements. My short answer, though, is: I just don’t know.

The Cruz Missile, a Republican, has been elected twice to the U.S. Senate. In his dozen or so years in the body, I cannot point to a single significant piece of legislation with his name on it. I can, however, look at many instances of grandstanding, of preening, of demagoguery, of sucking up and — of course — of public affairs disasters.

My all-time favorite Cruz blunder involves that ill-fated trip he took to Cancun, Mexico during the February 2021 killer freeze that took the lives of hundreds of Texans. He sought to take his family to the sunny beaches of the Mexican Riviera … until he was caught. Then he scurried back and then blamed his daughter for talking him into taking the trip in the first place.

Cruz is a doofus of the first order … albeit a well-educated buffoon.

He ran for POTUS in 2016, calling Donald Trump a sniveling coward. Then he lost and became Trump’s most ardent ally in the Senate. He was right the first time!

He almost lost his Senate seat in 2018 to the young upstart, Beto O’Rourke.

Now he’s up again for re-election. Two Democrats are vying for the chance to knock this clown off his stool in 2024. I like them both: Congressman Colin Allred of Dallas and state Sen. Roland Guiterrez of San Antonio. Indeed, I keep reading analysis that suggests that Cruz might be among the most likely GOP senators to be shown the door next year, which would — to my way of thinking — be so very sweet.

Cruz, by many accounts, is universally detested in the Senate. He cannot craft legislation. However, he can bloviate with the best of ’em. Which might explain how he keeps getting elected. Although I have difficulty believing Texans actually prefer pomposity over positivity. 

Here’s hoping — one more time — for an electoral result that will put a smile on my face.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com