business news, economic news, local news

What happened to the budget deficit?

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I want to discuss briefly on this blog an issue that once stood as the hallmark of conservative Republicans’ policy, but which has been buried under an enormous mountain of rhetoric … and money.

Republicans used to proclaim themselves to be “deficit hawks,” meaning that they detested the idea of spending more money than the Treasury had in hand for the government to operate. I’m sitting in my North Texas home at this moment thinking of the 1980 presidential campaign between President Carter and former California Gov. Ronald Reagan. Carter was saddled with a $43 billion shortfall in the budget, giving Reagan, the GOP nominee for president, ample ammunition to use against the incumbent.

That issue, along with the Iranian hostage crisis, paved the way for Reagan to score a massive landslide victory over Carter.

The $43 billion figure today seems quaint. Why? Because the deficit being run up by the current GOP POTUS tops — oh, hell, I don’t know — something in excess of $2 trillion. And that number is growing because of demands by the Pentagon to add another $1.5 trillion to fight a war with Iran that Trump says we’ve already won!

What the f***?

This quote has been ignored in recent years, but Trump once described himself during his run for office as “king of debt.” Well, His Majesty the Debt King has demonstrated that he doesn’t give a damn about predictions from earlier Republicans about what these deficits — and the spiraling national debt — will do to our nation’s long economic future. They said during the Obama years in the White House that the debt will destroy our economy.

The GOP thought today? BFD, man.

Therefore that makes Donald Trump the RINO in chief. He’s no real Republican … but just talks a good and fraudulent game.

Donald Trump, education news

First Amendment … in full

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That is what the nation’s founders wrote when they established has become known as the Bill of Rights.

Every head of our government understood that language, dating back to our nation’s first president, a national hero, George Washington, who took office in 1789; President Washington served two terms, left in 1797 … and died two year later.

The First Amendment makes it as clear as the deep blue sky that government should have no role in any of those things mentioned. Along came Donald J. Trump. He has sought to maneuver himself into an ability to govern all of the items mentioned in the First Amendment. He has endorsed Bible study in public schools, sought to ban Muslims from entering this country … and sought infamously to ban three news organizations from obtaining access to news sources within the White House or any other government building.

Now he is demanding that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night TV comic for making jokes about Trump. Let me be clear: Jimmy Kimmel hasn’t broken a single law, he hasn’t violated a single proposition noted in the First Amendment, hasn’t said a word that would put Trump in any form of danger.

He’s made jokes about the POTUS. He gets a lot of laughs. He’s funny, man.

Trump, who possesses the thinnest skin of any politician in human history, wants none of any of it. Humor not allowed. You wanna laugh … go to a circus and giggle at the clowns.

Trump’s ongoing battle over the First Amendment only illustrates in living color why I and many millions of other patriotic Americans want him far away from the center of political power.

economic news, local news

Airport set to make neighbors angry

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The news that McKinney National Airport is about to start commercial air service fills me with terribly mixed emotions.

Voters rejected a big bond issue a few years ago to expand the airport into a commercial terminal. About 58% of voters said “no!” to the idea of expanding the terminal into a commercial enterprise. Had I been given the opportunity to vote on it, I would have voted “yes.” I like the idea of a third commercial terminal serving air travelers in North Texas. It’s very convenient for me in Princeton to drive about three miles west on US 380 instead of driving to hell and gone to Love Field or D/FW airport to catch a plane.

Voters nixed the idea. Many of them voted no on the basis of environmental impact. Noise levels would be intolerable, they said. And traffic could make driving even worse than it is in Collin County.

The city would have none of that. They cobbled together another package. It’s smaller. It also will be funded through certificates of obligation, which do not require a vote.

I heard today that the first flight out of McKinney will be on Veterans Day. Avelo Airlines is the only carrier that has signed on so far to fly out of McKinney. I’ve seen the construction of the airport as I drive by on Airport Drive. It’s impressive.

It also stands as a testament to a local government’s stubbornness in proceeding with a project that residents stated clearly they don’t want.

legal news, media news

Ex-POTUSes are clear … media doing their job

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Listening as I have done for the past few days to the words spoken by recent former presidents of the United States leaves me with the clear impression that they understand the media’s role in maintaining a free and powerful nation.

And that the current president doesn’t get it.

Donald Trump wants media to report news as he sees it, not as they see it or how others see it. He says the nation is doing “great,” and wants the media to foment that lie. Others see the media role differently. They see the media as being faithful to its duty to report the news, even as it contains information critical of Trump.

Republican and Democratic presidents all understand. The GOP’s Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, both presidents Bush and Ronald Reagan all know that the press’s protection in the First Amendment is intended to protect the media from the kind of political coercion being applied by Trump. Same with the Democrats who have held the high office. JFK knew it, as did Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Obama, a Democrat, recently pointed out that he didn’t always like the news reported about him, but he understands the media is obligated to report the truth, even if it runs afoul of what presidents think about their reporting.

Republican and Democratic presidents all sang from the same political hymnal.

Until Trump came along. He doesn’t get it. He never will. He provides a never-ending litany of proof of his unfitness for public office

national news

DJT hates JFK … but why?

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Donald John Trump seems to hate John Fitzgerald Kennedy for reasons that defy logic.

Trump didn’t know the 35th president of the United States. An assassin ended Kennedy’s presidency nearly 63 years ago, when Trump was a teenager likely plotting ways to avoid serving in the U.S. military.

Trump hates the impact JFK had on America’s life. The nation cried incessantly when we buried the president. The arts community decided to honor the slain president by building the JFK Center for the Performing Arts in D.C. Now we have Trump wanting to desecrate the building by slapping his name on it, despite contributing next to nothing to the performing arts.

Now comes word that he might knock the building down if he fails to get his name inscribed on it.

All of this is the action of a small man. An insecure man. A man seeking to be perceived as great where greatness doesn’t not exist.

I am not one of those Americans who holds President Kennedy to a status he doesn’t deserve merely because his life ended far too soon. The greatness of his presidency still is being examined and written. I do know, however, when an inferior politician seeks to muscle his way to a place he doesn’t deserve.

That he would do so at John Kennedy’s expense tells me that Donald Trump hates JFK only because President Kennedy enjoyed the nation’s reverence that it denies Donald.

local news

Sixty-four years … and counting

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Word recently got to me that the man I’ve known longer than any human being on this Earth is moving a good bit closer.

He”ll settle soon in Phoenix, Ariz., which is a damn sight closer to my digs than Portland, Ore., where we first got acquainted in the seventh grade. Yep. That’s 64 years of uninterrupted friendship.

I want to hail this relationship in a brief tribute to the value of real friendships, not the fake friends one meets on our life journey, only to forget about them.

His name is Dennis. My parents moved us from Portland to the suburbs in the spring of 1962. My sisters and I thought our new house in the burbs was akin to Buckingham Palace. It was a modest split-level home that looked much like others on the street. Then the time came to enroll in our new school. It was in the middle of a school year, so I went from an elementary school to a junior high school.

Dennis and I met in our home room class on that first day. We’ve been best friends ever since.

Dennis and I have what one could call the real deal as friends. We’ve been through a lot together. We’ve had our ups and downs. The ups far outnumber the downs. We’ve always been there for each other. We went into the military the same year, 1968. I was inducted into the Army. D enlisted in the Coast Guard. I went to Vietnam to serve. So did he! Our paths came tantalizingly close to crossing in Da Nang. His ship docked there for a few hours, but he couldn’t get ashore long enough to look me up.

Dennis is a fellow whose friendship I cherish more with each passing year. We’re both long in the tooth these days. We’ve been throught tragedy, grief and mourning. Yet we’ve managed to come out clean.

Dennis provides me with the kind of friendship worthy of boasting about it. I believe I have done the same for him.

It’s the wee hours as I write this item. I’ll sign off by acknowledging what men our age should tell each other without flinching. I love this man.

legal news, media news

Trump lacks knowledge of the truth

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These videos keep cropping up showing Donald Trump trying to justify his order banning certain news organizations from the White House, as if that’s going to stop them from reporting “fake news.”

It won’t. Indeed, what CNN, MSNow and Politico have been reporting has been the truth. It’s just that the truth hurts the individual who’s being pilloried — justifiably — for the impact that the truth is having on Americans.

The news outlets being targeted are not peddling lies. They are reporting the news. Its favorability in Trump’s eyes depends solely on the content they contain.

Is it “fake news” to report the Iran war’s impact on goods we buy and the inflation all Americans are feeling? Or what about the collapsing morale aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln? Or the confusion in the Pentagon under the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth? How about the existence of a presidential aide with no high-level security clearance?

Trump wants to keep these items from being reported to the public that has a right to know how its government is functioning. He wants to shield the administration from the scrutiny that a free press can provide.

Every man who has preceded Trump in office has recognized the value of free press to the representative form of government it is covering.

Donald Trump is simply unwilling to accept the media’s role it performs in building a “more perfect” government. He lacks the intellect required to let the media do its job … which is protected specifically by the First Amendment.

 

legal news, media news

Wow! Trump tells the truth!

While ranting about the dangers of a free press, Donald Trump actually told the truth … he uttered a statement that holds up to scrutiny.

“We live in a country that allows people to report things that are negative,” Trump said while invoking a ban on certain news agencies from the White House.

So help me, I didn’t think I could report on this blog an actual truthful statement from the POTUS. But there it is. Holy smokes! Stop the presses!

Trump, of course, issued what is looking like a patently unconstitutional order by banning CNN, MSNow and Politico from the White House. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declares that the government cannot “abridge the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The president, therefore, cannot prohibit the media from doing its constitutionally protected job.

Trump will get his comeuppance once the courts get hold of this case and his banning of news organizations will be send to the scrap heap, where it belongs.

As for the ability to “report things that are negative,” what in the world is the alternative? The way I see it, the alternative lies in a totalitarian state where the media are banned by law from reporting negatively on government decisions. Violations of such a law would result in imprisonment or worse.

Thank goodness we live in a country that allows the press to function independently without fear of punishment.

media news

Trump has gone insane!

It’s official … my mind is blown. To smithereens. Into teeny-tiny pieces. Shards of brain matter are scattered all over creation. Donald Trump has become certifiably nuttier than a Payday bar.

The prevaricator in chief has just banned CNN, MS Now and Politico from the White House. No more access for these news outlets. I swear to Almighty God in Heaven, I cannot fathom what I am reading about this idiot.

He calls them merchants of “fake news,” and says that effective immediately, they will have no more access to White House sources. At this moment, not a sound from the right-wingers out there who have been giving Trump a pass on every single idiotic step he has taken since his first day in office in January 2017.

Just imagine Presidents Obama or Biden banning Fox News from the White House. It didn’t happen in the 12 years these men served as president. What do you suppose would be the right wing’s reaction to such a travesty? The MAGA morons would go ape-dookey in an instant. And they would be justified!

Therefore, I am going out-of-my-noggin nuts over this news from the White House that Donald has taken this course of action.

Just remember, this is the dipshit who has the nuclear codes at his disposal.

Donald Trump, national news

A new day is coming … honest!

One day, and this is an immutable fact, Donald J. Trump no longer will dominate the headlines, he no longer will be a presence on our TV screens and he longer will be filling cyberspace with his social media idiocy.

I’ve been thinking about when that day arrives and to be honest, I am stuck in a sort of limbo over how I might react when there’s no Trump around to get my blood boiling. It might come sooner than we think. Don’t misunderstand me on this point: I do not want Trump to perish. He does have a family and I am going to presume they love him, so I don’t really want them to suffer the agony of his passing.

He might resign the presidency, which is getting some legs in recent weeks as pundits, politicos and prognosticators calculate how much more of this constant battering even Donald can withstand.

This much is as ironclad as I can possibly get. On Jan. 20, 2029, Trump will hand the keys to the Oval Office to someone else. I have no clear favorite lined up who will get my vote. We have a number of fine individuals who should run for the office. I just want someone — anyone! — who knows how government works. Who knows his or her limitations. Who won’t seek to usurp power he or she doesn’t have per the Constitution.

I mean, the very idea that we could elect and then re-elect someone as ignorant as Trump to the nation’s highest office simply blows my noggin to smithereens.

The man is going to play out the string … eventually.

It is that knowledge that enables me to wake up every single morning with a smile on my puss. We’re getting a day closer with each sunrise to a day of liberation.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience