Donald Trump, State news

Cornyn’s time as senator is up?

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If I were a betting man — and I damn sure am not — I might be inclined to think that Sen. John Cornyn is facing a serious challenge to his once-storied congressional career.

He’s going to face Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on May 26 in a runoff election for the Senate seat Cornyn has occupied seemingly since The Flood. Why the gloomy outlook?

Cornyn finished first in a three-way Republican Party primary, winning 42% of the vote. Paxton finished second with 41%. Third place went to U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, who collected 13%.

Paxton and Hunt both paint Cornyn as a RINO, a ridiculous assertion on its face. If there is a more dedicated Republican in the Senate than Cornyn, I do not know who that would be. Indeed, Paxton and Donald Trump, his bestie in the White House, are the real Republicans in name only.

So, with the field narrowed to the top two GOP finishers, it falls on Paxton to seek Hunt voters to close the narrow gap between him and Cornyn. If the Hunt crowd is as MAGA gullible as I suspect they are, Paxton should have little trouble rounding up the support he needs to send Cornyn packing.

And what about Paxton? The guy is ethically challenged, to state the obvious. He was indicted early during his time as AG by a Collin County grand jury of securities trading allegations. He was supposed to go to trial long ago, but skated free of that episode. Several key legal aides quit the AG’s office and accused Paxton of corruption. The Republican-dominated House of Reps impeached Paxton, who then avoided conviction in the Texas Senate when Republican senators declined to follow their House colleagues’ lead.

If Paxton should manage to win the runoff, he will face a seriously rising star in the Texas Democratic Party, state Rep. James Talarico, who I will guess is dying to run against the ethically challenged AG.

We have just witnessed the opening act of a yearlong political drama. It’s going to get a whole lot rougher as we move on through the year. And if I were running the Democrat’s campaign, I just might be drooling at the chance to take on Ken Paxton.

First things first. Paxton has to win the GOP runoff. Here’s hoping for a donnybrookl

military news

I’m older, but still confused

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There once was a time when I was full of piss and vinegar, and when the United States of America was involved in a faraway war that seemed to have no end in sight.

You know what? I wanted to get into that fight if only to understand why we were fighting it and learn a lesson or two about life in real time. I got my wish and in the spring of 1969 I shipped out to Vietnam. I returned later still confused about what the hell we were doing there.

Bombs were falling and men were dying when I arrived. It all was happening when I returned home.

I’m an old man now. Too old to fight. We’re involved in yet another war, this time with Iran. Donald Trump decided to send in the bombers and, along with Israel, decided to inflict maximum damage to Iranian military command and control.

I am still confused. More so than before. I keep waiting for the POTUS to talk to me and to the nation. He is putting men and women in harm’s way. Some of theåm have died and the commander in chief has yet to acknowledge openly their deaths. He’s talked about the heavy damage U.S. and Israeli forces are inflicting. He says Iranian air defense is gone, along with its offensive capabilities; he says Iranian leadership in a state of chaos.

But … we have no stated exit strategy. No stated goal. No mention of regime change. Or a change in government. Capt. Bone Spurs declares we could be in this fight for a while.

Why? To what end?

Talk to us, Mr. POTUS. I’ll beseech you once more to simply tell us the truth behind why you have committed our young warriors to a war without an apparent end in sight.

national news

Tillis makes his point with DHS boss

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Thom Tillis was pissed off — as in royally pissed off — when his time arrived to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem before a U.S. Senate committee.

I watched a bit of Tillis’s performance, and I have to tell you, the North Carolina Republican brought his A-game to the hearing. He believes Noem is incompetent and doesn’t deserve to be in the job she holds. He wants Donald Trump to remove her if she doesn’t quit. If that won’t happen, he wants the House to impeach her.

Tillis is angry over the behavior of Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons who have been arresting children in schools, U.S. citizens and other on suspicion that they might be out to do harm to Americans. What a crock of bull dookey!

Here, though, is another remarkable aspect of Tillis’s remarks to Noem. The DHS secretary took it. She absorbed the blows quietly. She didn’t fire back with filibuster-like responses. There were no insults hurled at Tillis from the witness chair. She didn’t lie to suggest that ICE thugs were acting appropriately.

I only can conclude that unlike the Democratic members of Congress who have challenged Noem’s handling of this immigration matter, Republican members are getting the respect they deserve … and which all members of either party deserve when they question witnesses who take an oath to tell the truth.

Other appearances by Noem and other Cabinet honchos have been exercises in futility as Democrats and witnesses talk — and scream — over each other. The hearing I watched today was educational, given that Kristi Noem knew her place in the moment and reacted accordingly … for once!

local news, political news

RINOs are everywhere!

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Seems as if it takes damn little to be labeled a RINO these days … you know, a Republican in name only.

Donald Trump, the nation’s RINO in chief, throws the term around with utterly no understanding of the irony that he calls anyone a RINO.

Texas is going through its primary election today. State Rep. Jeff Leach has been called a RINO by his challenger Henry Thorsen. Why? Well, it seems that Leach had the temerity to serve as a prosecutor in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial in the Texas Senate.

Never mind the body of work that Leach compiled while representing Collin County in the Legislature. You turn against a crook like Paxton? You’re toast.

It’s happened to other anti-Trump Republicans, such as former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney. She stood her ground and went for Trump’s jugular. She remains a conservative Republican. But she’s now out of office, scorned by the very party to which she once dedicated her political life.

Paxton and Trump are now besties. That’s the connection between the Texas AG and the POTUS.

I won’t vote in the Texas GOP primary today. I am going. to pull for Jeff Leach. I don’t know him well, but I do know him to be a conservative with a conscience. What’s more, he is no RINO!

national news, national security

Border crisis need not produce this solution

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Critics of this blog have long accused its author — that would be me — of being a “yes man” to all policies Democratic and a “hatchet man” to ideas that come from Republicans.

Wrong! As in really wrong!

I was the rare President Biden supporter who said long ago that the president needed to call the situation along our southern border what I believed it was: a crisis. He refused to do so. Instead, the president masked the situation in gauzy terms meant to disguise the reality along our southern flank, which was that people were continuing to seek refuge in the “land of opportunity, freedom and good fortune.”

Donald Trump came along and then sicced the Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons on our cities and border towns. The result of their heavy hand has made us even less safe. I want, therefore, to declare that Trump’s answer to the crisis is the wrong answer.

If the current POTUS had an ounce of compassion coursing through his overfed body he would have told the ICE agents to use extreme discernment in rooting out the bad guys. He didn’t. The ICE goons have picked up on the message from the top, which is that it’s OK to roust everyone, to beat many of them to within an inch of their lives, to separate children from their parents.

I like quoting one of my favorite philosophers, who happens to be fictional character on a once-popular TV show. You remember Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick who used to tell the world that “Two wrongs don’t make it right.”

Tonto is correct. It was wrong for President Biden to avoid declaring the southern border mess a “crisis.” It is wrong for Donald Trump to hire heavily armed and masked thugs to beat the living daylights out of U.S. citizens while searching for criminals.

It no longer matters what we call the border mess. We can fix the second problem and force ICE to rethink the way it enforces the law.

military news

Ayatollah is dead. What now?

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Word broke over the weekend that U.S. and Israeli forces launched massive air strikes against Iran, killing the Ayatollah Khameini and several of his family members in the process.

I have been trying like the dickens to wrap my arms around what this means to patriots like you and me.

As an American patriot, I applaud Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for ordering the strikes on Iran. The ayatollah was a seriously bad man and he needed to be taken out by whatever means necessary. Now, though, come the questions. They are plentiful and they need serious answers.

Presidents cannot declare war unilaterally. The Constitution says Congress must approve any presidential request to go to war. Trump reportedly didn’t consult with anyone on Capitol Hill before launching the attacks on Iran.

Trump won the 2024 election partly by declaring he would end “the endless wars” this nation has fought since 9/11. Have we just committed our sons and daughters in uniform to another endless conflict?

Do we intend to seek a change in regimes in Tehran? The Iranians today reportedly are in a state of confusion over the future of the Islamic Revolution.

Trump seems to have adopted a cavalier attitude about his decision to put our warriors in harm’s way. He is conducting war policy from — gulp! — his golf resort in south Florida. The Situation Room in the White House? Who needs it? Not the current president … apparently!

Iran is no cupcake pushover. It is a country of 90 million people who have lived under the repressive heels of the radicals who stormed to power in 1979 when the shah was tossed out. Khameini’s death was met with joyous celebrations in the United States and across Europe. He had killed thousands of Iranians who had protested their government’s heavy hand.

Now he’s dead and the time has arrived for the president to speak to Americans and explain what the hell he’s going to do now. I know this is a tall order for Donald Trump but — for God’s sake — tell us the truth.

crime news

Nothing to hide? Show us!

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A thought keeps rattling around in my noggin that I just cannot shake loose … and it has everything to do with Donald Trump and his one-time bestie, the late sex trafficker and child molester Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump keeps insisting he and Epstein only were pals, that he took no part in the sexual escapades of which Epstein was convicted. Fine, Mr. POTUS. But why in the name of full disclosure do you keep resisting calls to show us the entire catalog of files that have been dug on Epstein? If there is no “there, there,” then show us for real, Donald.

We’ve waltzed down the pea patch with Trump already. He said he broke no laws in filing his income taxes, but won’t allow us to see them. Now we hear that his name appears in those Epstein files thousands of times. He once pledged to release them all. Then he backed away.

Look, I am willing to give Trump the tiniest benefit of the doubt on this matter. I do not believe he diddled underage girls along with Epstein and any other of the perverts who’ve been singled out.

The overarching question in my mind is … what did Trump know about Epstein’s behavior and when did he know it? I believe it is important for Americans to know when a man who would become president was a BFF with a guy who would be convicted of horrifying sexual crimes against girls.

He won’t tell us anything about that. He won’t allow the public to see files that well could clear him of any criminality. He is engaging in a coverup on a scale that seems set to dwarf anything that the Nixon administration did during the Watergate scandal more than five decades ago.

Come clean, Mr. POTUS.

State news

Trump Country turns anti-ICE

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I won’t be coy about stating what I believe is the obvious, which is that I live in the heart of Trump Country but this heart is not beating in favor of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons.

All those demonstrations we are seeing across the country have been full of protesters in Texas. It makes me proud of the state I have called home for the past 42 years.

Texans have accepted the reality that it is wrong for hooded, masked, heavily armed thugs to arrest children, bully U.S. citizens and then seek to install prison camps holding thousands of undocumented U.S. residents in peaceful communities.

We want no part of that. Nor do we want to endorse the heavy hand Donald Trump is deploying to look for criminals who, by and large, do not even exist.

What I believe we are witnessing in Texas is the piece-by-piece dismantling of the coalition that Trump managed to cobble together to win two elections to the White House.

His insistence that ICE is behaving properly only lends fuel to the argument that his critics are building. I’m glad to see Texas playing a key part in that particular drama.

local news

How has my life changed?

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Every now and then, I get a question from a High Plains Blogger reader that makes me struggle for an answer.

Such as this one, from a critic: How has my life been made worse by Donald Trump? He is likely to read this post and might respond to me, probably telling me I suffer from terminal Trump Derangement Syndrome. I’ll plead guilty to it.

Truth is, my life isn’t worse because of Trump. I’m on a fixed income and Trump has been unable to mess with it. I live comfortably in my North Texas home. I am making friends. I have two dogs who adore their daddy. I am enrolled in the Department of Veterans Affairs health care program, so my health insurance isn’t affected by Trump’s gutting of it.

None of this is about me. Trump’s ruination of our democratic republic has caused me some anxiety. He has made me jittery at times. My sleep deprivation is worsening and I suppose I could lay some of that at Trump’s feet.

I see polling data that tells me most Americans feel uneasy about the direction Trump is leading this nation. Americans dislike the tariffs, we’re angry that his promise to end inflation has flopped, his pledge to end the Russia-Ukraine war hasn’t borne fruit.

The most frightening act he’s committed was to pardon all the traitors who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, including those convicted of attacking police officers assigned to keep law and order. And then he accuses President Biden’s border policies of endangering Americans because he lets felons enter the country illegally. Good ever-lovin’ grief, man!

Has my life been altered by the moron in chief? Not in a tangible way. I suppose it’s fair to ask whether the MAGA crowd has seen its life enhanced by the policies enacted in Trump’s name. If you’re worth billions of dollars, I suppose you’re breathing a bit more easily these days.

Meanwhile, I shall keep my eyes focused forward … to Nov. 3, Election Day.

Donald Trump, national news

Stage set for midterm wipeout

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Donald J. Trump could have followed the path forged by every one of the men who preceded him in the office he occupies.

He could have reached out to Democrats and said, “I pledge to work with you to cure what ails us.” Well … he didn’t do that when he stood in front of a partially filled House of Reps chamber to deliver the State of the Union speech that has been widely panned.

Instead, he called Democrats names for their refusal to attend the speech. He accused them of inflating the cost of food, of following an “open border” policy pushed by former President Biden, of putting Americans in danger.

The SOTU didn’t go well for Trump. Polling data suggests that Americans saw straight through what he was doing, which was he talked to his MAGA base, seeking to rally the shrinking core of fervent Trumpkins to get out and vote.

I watched about half of Trump’s speech. I didn’t see the staredown he had with U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona or when he introduced all the celebrities who attended the speech. I understand Democrats joined their GOP colleagues in applauding the U.S. men’s hockey team fresh from winning Olympic gold in Milan, Italy; the bipartisan ovation was a nice touch to be sure.

Trump, though, has set the table for a GOP rout when the midterm election comes around in November. I have no clue how many congressional seats the Democrats will gain. I am going to hope for all my worth that the Constitution will stand strong against Trump’s all but admitted attempt to rig the election.

I believe we are now witnessing the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the democracy the rest of us cherish.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience