national news

We will survive this madness!

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Allow me to restate what I have stated already, which is that the founding fathers knew what could happen to the nation they created after the American Revolution.

That is why I continue to believe that the U.S. Constitution will hold up under the pressure being applied to it by those who support the Dipshit in Chief who is seeking to undermine the document he has sworn to “defend and protect.”

The founders built a nation they knew would bend, and bend and bend some more. It set aside the three co-equal branches of government that they designed to check each other if any of them reached beyond their grasp. During the current crisis, we see the executive branch as reaching way beyond what the founders ever sought or allowed. The problem lies at the moment in a legislative branch that refuses to act on what many of its members know to be unconstitutional acts. They also are illegal. Yet they continue to allow the leader of the executive branch, the Imbecile in Chief, to get away with crime after crime.

All is far from lost, however. The third branch of government, the federal judiciary, so far has held firm at least at the lower-court level. Dozens have lawsuits have been tossed into the crapper by lower courts, sending a clear and unambiguous message to the POTUS that his legal claims have little or any standing.

The Constitution also allows for Americans to elect a full House of Representative every two years. We elect one-third of our U.S. Senate every two years. This year looks as though we could see a wholeshale change in the makeup of Congress. The House is poised to turn from Republican to Democratic control. Same could occur with the Senate. Right there lies the safeguard against the power grab we are witnessing in the executive branch.

The United States Constitution will do its job. Of that I remain supremely confident … and it is giving me hope that we will survive this madness and hopefully emerge from this cesspool stronger than ever.

International news

Weak POTUS feigns strength

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Donald J. Trump’s gallery of demonstrations of weakness keeps growing, as it did this week at the end of a two-day summit with Chinese strongman Xi Jing Pin.

Honest to goodness, I couldn’t believe I was hearing what poured out of the U.S. president’s trap describing China’s leader. He called him a “strong leader.” He said he was charismatic. He praised Xi’s height. His looks. His demeanor.

He didn’t say a word in public about the millions of civilians who have died under Xi’s rule. Or about the fact that Xi’s re-election victory margins are all but mandated by the government he runs.

Good ever-lovin’ grief. Yumpin’ yiminy, man.

He came back from Beijing with nothing to show for his two-day demonstration of bluster, brvado and boorishness.

I’ll explore very briefly the other matter that’s getting considerable play: Trump’s physical condition. Dude appears to be losing a step with each public appearance. Now, I don’t fault him in any way for that. He is nearly 80 years of age. He’s the oldest man ever to sit in the Oval Office. Hell, I’m losing a step or two myself, as time is creeping on me as well, as it does for every human being on Earth.

No one close to Trump appears prepared to tell him that he’s looking like he’s been rode hard and put up wet.

Then again, such candor wouldn’t work on a man who lives in a world of fake grandeur and delusion.

God help us the rest of the way through this dips***’s presidency.

national news

FBI boss did this?

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FBI Director Kash Patel, who long ago earned this blogger’s designation as the most disgusting Donald Trump appointee has outdone himself.

This idiot decided to go SCUBA diving at the Battleship Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. This memorial happens to be the final resting place for about 1,000 sailors and Marines who died during the Dec. 7, 1941 attack at Pearl Harbor by Japanese warplanes. The attack brought us into World War II. The rest, of course, is history.

But the seriously boorish behavior by the FBI director to go SCUBA diving at the memorial denigrates beyond measure the heroes who are interred in the wreckage of the battleship on which they served.

Kash Patel should be fired immediately by Donald Trump. This behavior is absolutely despicable.

national news

Can’t forget the epithets

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Man, it is difficult for me to remove my mind from the imaginary flashback machine when I hear the GOP suck-ups heap praise on a man many of them once labeled with a number of highly unflattering descriptions.

They included terms such as: racist, narcissist, pathological liar, fraud, phony, ignoramus, moron … and my favorite, sniveling coward.

That was then, when Donald J. Trump was one of many Republicans seeking the party’s presidential nomination for the 2016 run for the U.S. presidency. A Democrat, Barack H. Obama, had just completed two successful terms as president and Trump lurked amont a large field of GOP contenders in the fight to succeed a man they once vilified with another set of epithets.

Trump got elected in 2016. He lost his bid for re-election in 2020. He won again in 2024. What became of all those name-callers? They joined the president’s MAGA cult and now label as Republican In Name Only anyone who dares speak ill of the guy who once provoked an insurrection in an attempt to overturn the2020 election results.

We’re in the midst of another election cycle and the former Trump critics today can’t stop cheering loudly for the guy who they once labeled — correctly, in my view — all those mean things I listed at the top of this blog post.

Our airwaves are being flooded at the moment by Republican runoff candidates seeking to “out-Trump” other Republicans. Ted Cruz stands behind Chip Roy who’s running for Texas attorney general by calling him the most dedicated Trumpkin in the U.S. House. Cruz, I should tell you, once labeled Trump a “sniveling coward.”

Well, Sen. Cruz, which is it … sniveling coward or the greatest statesman since Daniel Webster?

economic news

Waiting for the next fiscal explosion

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Kevin Warsh has been approved as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Just like his predecessor, Jerome Powell, Warsh takes office with the highest praise possible from the president who nominated him. Donald Trump calls Warsh the brightest economic mind on the planet. Compared him, rhetorically, to the day they put pockets on shirts. He’s that good, according to the president.

Funny, huh? Trump kinda said the same thing about Powell when he got the job as Fed chair. Then Powell pushed back a bit on Trump’s insistence that he cut interest rates. Powell was concerned about whether such a move would spark an inflation outburst. Trump’s response was to denigrate Powell’s knowledge of fiscal matters.

OK. So … the new Fed chair has the wind at his back. I wish him well and hope — for the sake of my retirement account — he follows his fiscal instincts and makes decisions based on the facts as he considers them in the moment.

I am waiting, though, for the first time he decides something that get under POTUS’s skin. What will happen then? Will the POTUS declare that the most brilliant economist in world history has turned into the biggest chump of all time? Is the POTUS who has driven several business endeavors into bankruptcy declare he knows more about economics than the Fed chair?

Yep. He probably will. Wait for it.

science news

Anxious for the next manned space flight

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All right, kids. I might be the only red-blooded American patriot who thinks this way, but dammit … I am anxious for the next Artemis space flight to the moon.

Artemis III will launch in 2027 (I think) and will carry another four-person crew. The next flight is supposed to land on the surface and the astronauts will get to scurry around the lunar landscape doing an assortment of this and that experiments.

Why so anxious? Well, I want to cheer these men and women on to great success. I also want the TV airwaves and Internet channels to focus on something other than the political feces being tossed around. Yep, the news cycles are boring me out of my mind.

Space travel was put on the shelf for 50 years or so. Apollo 17 was the final lunar mission that NASA launched in 1972 … until Artemis II rocketed into space for that glorious lunar orbit mission and sent home those astonishing pictures of the dark sideof the moon.

I don’t believe I am the only American waiting for a return to space. Just know that this kind of adventure gets my heart pumpiing. So does some of the political rhetoric I hear, but the ticker pumps heavily for the wrong reasons.

Donald Trump, political news

Wanting to see more kids’ photo ops

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Five years into the current presidential administration — split, of course by the four years of Joe Biden’s presidency — and I am left to wonder what about the many things we’ve been missing as we watch Donald J. Trump stumble and bumble his way to oblivion.

We do not see any visual images of the POTUS enjoying his family. Where are all the grandkids we have heard about? Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Tiffany all have little ones, right? Yet the only images we see of Grandpa Donald are those of him dressed in a blue suit, that overly long red tie, with his pile of hair coiffed atop his vacuous skull.

Oh, and of course we see the POTUS in his golf garb, cheating at golf.

The overwhelming image of Trump is him chewing out reporters for doing their job, denigrating them for asking difficuilt questions.

I’m well aware that people in the public eye have private lives. But so many presidents have been more than willing to have their children be photographed doing whatever it is kids do. JFK, had his two small kids in the White House; LBJ’s daughters were frequent fixtures in front of cameras; so were Richard Nixon’s daughters; Gerald Ford had five kids and he was seen spending plenty of time with them; Jimmy Carter had daughter Amy living in the White House; George H.W. I Bush famously referred to his kids and grandkids; Bill Clinton was photographed often with little Chelsea; George W. Bush’s twin daughters often were in front of cameras; Barack Obama’s daughters grew up before our eyes in the White House; Joe Biden let the world watch him play with his grandkids.

I didn’t mention Ronald Reagan for a reason. He had a difficult relationship with his two youngest kids. His two elder kids both were politically active and led separate, equally visible lives.

I want the next president to reveal his family to us, and to demonstrate his commitment to them. I believe can derive his commitment to all American families if we get to see how they treat their own.

local news, media news

Honoring my favorite Mom

You have said it. Surely you have thought it. Maybe many of you are thinking of it today.

It goes like this: Where would we be without our mothers? The one answer is obvious, in that we wouldn’t be anywhere without them.

My bride and I brought two boys into his goofy world of ours. I cannot tell you where they would be without Kathy Anne there to guide them through life’s trials I can assert, though, that they wouldn’t be the two finest men in the world. My pride in them is real, it is visceral, it is — to whatever degree one should ascribe to it — my legacy.

But none of this is about me. It is about Kathy Anne.

I lost her to glioblastoma a little more than three years ago. Her fight against this aggressive brain cancer was brief, but it was savage. I lost her six weeks after getting the diagnosis of a mass on the right side of her brain.

We were married for more than ever 51 years. She was 71 when she took her final breath.

God put her on this Earth to be a Mom. She was a natural. Her mothering instincts were virtually perfect. She always could comfort them when they hurt. She knew how to tease them without damaging their emotions. She always couched her advice into phrases that reminded our sons to trust their own instincts … and that no matter their decision, they would have their parents’ backing.

Kathy Anne taught them to be respectful to adults. She imbued in them a sense of humility. She laughed and cried with them.

And the moment she and I learned we were going to be grandparents was one for the ages. She shrieked, giggled and cried all at once.

Mother’s Day is not the same without my bride. I am continuing to build on the life she and I started. One of the key results of that life-building has been that my family and I are closer than ever.

That is how she would want it.

local news, media news, political news

Voter turnout sinks into the crapper

Hey, fellow Princeton residents, we had an election this past weekend … although hardly anyone took part.

And when I say “hardly anyone,” I mean precisely that. Election Day came and went and the entire city didn’t give a crap. What an absolute disgrace!

Check out these stats: Princeton is home to 18,923 registered voters. Of that total, only 476 residents bothered to vote. That gives us a municipal turnout of 2.52%. Roll that around for a moment.

Two point five-two fu***** percent of registered voters cast ballots in the election to find a replacement for Place 4 City Councilman Ryan Gerfers, who resigned because of health concerns. Here’s some more grist for you to gnaw on: That total dismisses the eligible residents who are registered to vote, but they haven’t even bothered to register with election officials.

The city will conduct a runoff election to determine whether Planning & Zoning Commissioner Jan Goria or Home Rule Committee Chair Jaisen Rutledge — the top two finishers in the May 3 election will succeed Gerfers.

Princeton Mayor Eugene Escobar Jr. expressed disappointment in the turnout. “I want to improve how we engage with the community and increase participation in our elections so we can actually bring the changes you are wanting,” Escobar told the Princeton Herald. I agree that the city needs to do much better.

Here’s an idea for the mayor to consider. Conduct a series of town hall meetings around our growing city. Explain to residents the importance of casting ballots in municipal election. Do we really want to cede the decision to how much we pay for services we say we want to our neighbors? We are a city on the move. We are adding new residents almost daily. It falls on City Hall to reach out to our new neighbors to tell them about our city and the process we use to keep it functioning.

City Hall, meanwhile, needs to deploy social media messaging services to tell us about the election and explain why deciding these contests keeps us involved in the process of local governance.

A turnout of 2.52% cannot be allowed to stand!

local news, media news

Once towering presence has vanished

You know some things are inevitable, but when it happens, well … you’re still stunned.

I ventured to Amarillo this week to see some friends and take care of a little personal business. Then it hit me like a punch in the puss. The newspaper where I worked for 18-plus years no longer exists. The Amarillo Globe-News, whose owner once committed to serving the community for as long as he walked this Earth, has vanished. It now operates — kinda/sorta — out of Lubbock.

My first reaction? Wow, man!

The newspaper once was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service in 1961 for exposing public corruption in government. The public service award is the highest honor given to print journalists. Well, gang, the newspaper didn’t maintain that level of admiration. It was a solid paper when I joined it in January 1995 and we did good work there. Then the shit hit the fan. The Internet took over. The group to which the G-N belonged began bleeding money. Advertisers pulled out. Circulation plummeted. Staff members were sent packing.

The newspaper group that bought the paper in 1972 surrendered to the inexorable tide of change and sold the entire group for next to nothing.

Now it’s gone.

I lament the demise of a once-grand institution. No, it’s worse than that. I feel at times — like right now — like crying.

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