..."PERSON OF THE YEAR"... ...Coach J.C. Ramirez Wins 2023 Applause...Brownsville Veterans Memorial High's Chargers Shocked RGV Fans, Roared To State Semifinals...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas |...He began the year back in January as defensive coordinator for the Chargers. He ended it as the brand-new head coach who took a small, battling Brownsville Veterans Memorial High team to the state semifinals, the farthest any football team from the Rio Grande Valley has been in playoff play since the Donna Redskins won the valley's only State Championship in 1961.

The "he" in this story would be one J.C. Ramirez, shown in photo above.

For his lofty achievement and a truly spectacular accomplishment, Coach Ramirez is The McAllen Sun's 2023 Person of The Year.

It began somewhat dismally, as Brownsville Veterans Memorial lost two its first four games - against San Benito and PSJA. It then reeled off eight straight wins before whipping an undefeated, ranked squad from PSJA North. That was followed by a stunning victory over much-favored, also undefeated Corpus Christi Miller in Brownsville.

That upset propelled the Chargers into the semifinals tussle against powerhouse Smithson Valley High. A rocky start led to a rout that had Smithson Valley up 49-0 as the fourth quarter began before the Chargers reeled off 21 unanswered points.

The final score was a painful 49-21.

Ramirez made no excuses for the loss. From a fan's standpoint, it was clear that Smithson Valley had the bigger, faster players. Its defensive line outweighed Brownsville Vets by a sizable margin, leading to a sense of desperation on every Chargers offensive snap.

It's a cliche to say that all teams in state playoffs are losers except one - the eventual champion. Smithson Valley was routed by Aledo High 51-8 the following weekend.

But it was that "Valley High" that Coach Ramirez delivered, as the entire admiring Rio Grande community stayed glued to Brownsville Veterans Memorial High's long run through the playoffs. Usually, it is one and done for valley teams against tougher upstate squads.

Not this year.

Coach Ramirez took Brownville to new heights. In his first year as head coach.

We have no inside info on the make-up of next year's team to say Brownsville Veterans Memorial will again challenge for the state title. This may have been one of those special seasons.

The coach's work is best measured by this factoid: There are seven high schools in Brownsville. State Champion Aledo has one.

Fielding teams for seven schools waters down the talent pool for any one high school.

That alone puts the bright, deserving Klieg lights on Coach Ramirez's tireless drive and ultimate success. What began as a team's struggle to mesh ended in a feel-good story beyond anyone's expectations. This was a truly remarkable season for valley football. 

Coach is our Rio Grande Valley "Person of The Year"...

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NEEDFUL THINGS:...Demos Want Republican Trump As Opponent in 2024...Ballot Rap Is Just A Subplot...They Know They Can Beat Trump...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...They demonize him daily and forever note his many failings as a president and as a human being, but, deep down, Democrats want Republican Donald J. Trump in 2024. They want him badly, as in right now - nominate his ass and let's get it on, as referee Mills Lane liked to say before Big Time heavyweight boxing matches in Las Vegas.

Don't be fooled by all that ballot or no ballot crapola playing in some states. Ask any Democrat willing to go full-bore honest and you'll get the word: Biden vs. Trump in the Election Day Main Event.

Maine horse-collared Trump this week, kicking him off the Pine Tree State's ballots while citing his role in the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot, i.e. the insurrection. This followed similar action taken earlier by Colorado, and it may just precede the same from a few other states before the issue is resolved.

Still, Democrats have steadily joined the chorus of sitting politicians not quite cool with the idea of Trump getting the boot.

Angus King, an Independent U.S. Senator from Maine who voted to impeach the former president during his second impeachment trial, had this to say about Trump's banishment from his state:

"Although I respect the Secretary of State's careful process – which she was specifically required to undertake under Maine law – absent a final judicial determination of a violation of the 14th Amendment's disqualification clause, I believe the decision as to whether or not Mr. Trump should again be considered for the presidency should rest with the people as expressed in free and fair elections."

Those are actually the kindest words you'll ever hear from King about Trump, a politician he has criticized harshly and often in the past.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, also quickly came out against Trump being banned. No word yet from left-leaning New Mexico and politically-unsure Arizona - states that may eventually join the Ban Trump Movement. New York is also in the conversation on that, as is Oregon.

Shirley Weber, California's Democratic secretary of state, certified Trump on the Golden State's ballot for the March 5 primary hours after her Maine counterpart, Shenna Bellows, said Trump was not eligible to be on the ballot there on the same primary day.

Weber's move is in sync with what Newsom – himself a rising star in Democratic politics – says is the best way to deal with Trump.

"There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy," Newsom said in an earlier statement. "But, in California, we defeat candidates at the polls."

Faced with nagging issues like this one, the inclination on the part of national politicians is to ride things out. Forcing solutions never works. Here, it appears our elected representatives want the courts - and the voters - to deal the cards.

A second layer of the story here is that some Americans, from both parties, believe a younger Republican could defeat President Joe Biden. At the head of that small class of second-tier candidates has been former South Carolina Gov. Nikke Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Neither, however, has cut into Trump's sizable polling lead, even after four televised debates.

Haley's recent rise was derailed this past week when, during a news conference in New Hampshire, she was asked to name causes of the American Civil War and she ignored slavery. A hasty correction the following day did little to assuage those she had confounded.

DeSantis, meanwhile, has spent millions and seen it all go for naught.

He is now trailing Trump and Haley, according to recent polls. Serious financial backers and senior campaign aides have bailed of late. It says here that DeSantis peaked months ago and is now just another headless body on the campaign trail, there alongside defeated businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

The Iowa Caucus on January 15 will set Trump's nomination sails, and the word from some of the major political pundits is that he may have the GOP nomination in his wallet by Super Tuesday's voting in early-March.

That will make Democrats extremely happy...

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ROUGHED UP:...Republican Trump Kicked Off Primary Ballot In Maine...Insurrection, Bubba?...Oh, No!!!...Sullied Supreme Court Will Rule...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...He's been getting the benefit of the doubt for long months, that riot at the U.S. Capitol hanging around his neck like a spoiled 50-lb. ham, but it appears a predicted snowball of efforts to kick him off state ballots is now underway.

Hail, Maine!

The northeastern state has coldly told crazed Republican Donald J. Trump that he won't be on the Primary ballots. The move follows an initial stab undertaken earlier by Colorado. So, yeah, who's next?

This from apnews.com: [ Maine on Thursday removed Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the Constitution’s insurrection clause, becoming the first election official to take action unilaterally as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide whether Trump remains eligible to return to the White House.

The decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (shown in photo below) follows a ruling earlier this month by the Colorado Supreme Court that booted Trump from the ballot there under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That decision has been stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether Trump is barred by the Civil War-era provision, which prohibits those who "engaged in insurrection" from holding office.

Bellows suspended her ruling until that court system rules on the case. In the end, it is likely that the nation’s highest court will have the final say on whether Trump appears on the ballot in Maine and in the other states. ]

That "insurrection basketball" is now in the Supreme Court's court.

Analysis on what the justices will do is all over the place. Some pundits say it will eventually side by the states; others say it won't even take on the case, leaving the lower courts to rule and then simply live with the ruling, essentially bailing on being put on the spot.

Trump continues to play with court dockets by way of an avalanche of appeals, but the fat chickens will ultimately come to roost. He's standing by his belief that whatever he said or did during the day of the riot fell within the scope of his presidential duties, a position many legal experts find dubious.

Should the high court strap on its pants and rule?

Yes, it says here.

It may not have the best of reputations these days, but the U.S. Supreme Court still wears its high-fallutin standing in American society. Every contested thing seems to be finding its way before the court.

Colorado's case is expected to hit the court's docket on January 4th, one day before the Rocky Mountain State has to okay ballots. Iowa holds is caucus on January 15th, followed by the vote in New Hampshire and Super Tuesday in early March.

As expected, the defensive Trump camp labeled Maine's ruling as an over-reach.

Whatever.

So long as the issue gets to court sooner rather than later...

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SWITCHEROO:...Fondled In Public And Losing At Home, Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert Abandons Her 3rd Congressional District...Will Move Across State...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...She was fondled nicely at a stage play in Denver this year, there caught on security video playing touchy-touch with a male friend. Theater-goers seated around her looked away mostly, but the two-way groping went on for several long seconds, the guy's hands cupping Congresswoman Lauren Boebert's breasts as if some pumped-up high schooler on a first date.

On stage, the play "Beetlejuice" went on.

Republican Boebert and her pal would be kicked-out before the show ended, this after she also refused to stop vaping while seated in the audience.

Well, now the 38-year-old grandmother has kicked herself out of her 3rd Congressional District in Western Colorado and is moving across the state to the eastern side to run for office. Pundits in the Rocky Mountain State have said she had no chance of being reelected after that sex-in-the-seat act and her noisy, ceaseless ways of staying in the news.

Boebert is a hothead in Congress.

She's not the only one. Georgia's Marjorie Taylor Greene comes to mind, as does Florida's Matt Gaetz.

But the attractive Boebert, who filed for divorce earlier this year, has seen her fortunes drop dramatically in her home district. Democrats had been gearing up for a run at her seat, with Boebert claiming her departure came after realizing that "Hollywood" money was being injected into the race to beat her.

This from newsweek.com: [ Lauren Boebert announced on Wednesday that she's seeking to switch districts, from Colorado's third congressional district to its more conservative fourth, in what the Donald Trump supporting firebrand said would be a "fresh start" following a "pretty difficult year for me and my family."

The move inserts Boebert into a tough GOP primary fight to replace Representative Ken Buck, who has announced he won't seek re-election in a district he won with just over 60 percent of the vote in November 2022. By contrast, at that election, Boebert only narrowly beat Adam Frisch by around 500 votes, with the self-styled "conservative Democrat" having already announced a second bid for the district in 2024.

However, Boebert's move has already sparked a backlash from Republicans in Colorado's 4th Congressional District, including from state Representative Richard Holtorf who had already announced a bid for the House seat.

In a statement responding to Boebert's announcement, Holtorf commented: "If you can't win in your home, you can't win here. She knew she'd lose in her own district and I'll show her that'll she'll lose here too." ]

Those who follow congressional politics and excitable Boebert in particular know that she's been on a losing streak, of sorts...

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IMMIGRATION:...On The Hoof...Thousands, Says The Media...Mexico Meeting U.S. Secy. Of State Today...Texas Just Being Texas...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...The photographs are dramatic, no question about that. Any sort of unwanted mob action spurs fears in people. Who are these guys and why do they want to come here? There are answers, of course. Only, during harsh political times of the sort we are currently living, few want answers at all.

They want action.

They want someone to stop the mob.

A hurried meeting is on tap today in Mexico City between Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Again, talks will hash-out the problem and the long list of solutions - none which has ever worked.

Hordes of Migrants are on the hoof. They are coming to the southern border with great hopes of entering the country for whatever reason they carry in their pocket. It is the country's roiling socio-political issue, a burr in the national saddle so to speak.

What the hey to do? Is the federal government doing enough to stem the surge? Is that patchwork fencing even working. The courts have rid Texas of its mid-river buoys in the Rio Grande and allowed the U.S. Border Patrol to cut razor wire obstacles set in place by Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, a politician who believes he can skirt federal law at will.

He's wrong. The courts have sat him back down every time he dreams up and puts into effect another of his harsh responses. Abbott is not the ruler of an independent state. He is doing what Arizona did a dozen years ago, when the federal courts also shut that down.

Immigration is a federal responsibility, and the government sooner or later takes ownership of the mess.

Texas has done much to fend-off the migrants thanks to a hellbent approach taken by Abbott, who has followed the Far-Right Way and made political hay with the lives of migrants Texas detains and often buses to other states. That is not a solution; that is a political jab.

Abbott knows it.

But he believes Texans are dumbasses who believe he is a ruler of sorts and not an elected official. Most who follow the ways of idea becoming law know that some are challenged. Abbott has lucked into the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is sympathetic to Republican politics. The U.S. Supreme Court, ultimate decider, is another thing altogether.

Abbott keeps losing there.

States, no matter how independent and cowboyish, cannot create and enforce their own immigration laws, just like they cannot print their own money or open their own embassies. Federalism reigns. Texas cannot always get what it wants.

It is a bitter pill for Abbott to swallow, but there it is.

Texas may yet put up some more creative blocks for the migrants, but even the staunch defensive line of the Texas Longhorns would not be able to line-up and stay for any length of time.

Repeat after me: immigration is a federal responsibility.

Now, if a suddenly-energized Uncle Sam next arrives with an armada of PBRs (machine gun-armed patrol boats of the sort used in rivers during the Vietnam Conflict) or a convoy of concrete trucks to at last erect that 50-foot wall from Brownsville at the lower end of the Rio Grande to Southern California, well...

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[EDITOR'S NOTE:...By the way, the photo of the marching migrants you see atop this post was taken in 2018 and involved Hondurans, not the Colombians and Venezuelans said to be in the current convoy. The story (problem) is not new, as isn't the photography...) 

TACO TUESDAY:...McAllen Mayor Out For A Holiday Kill Shot...New Year's Eve In The Bally...We Tackle Mayra...Paz In Our Time...Dunderheaded GOP Games...Neece Gone...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas |...The mayor was out killing deer. It was the week before Christmas and a steady salvo of gun shots rang out across the land. There would be fresh venison at the Holiday Dinner Table, after all.

That's McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos at left in field photo above.

Villalobos, a non-screaming, non-scheming Traditional Republican, is a walkabout mayor. He's been to Olde Mexico umpteen times, and he recently returned from another business-seeking junket to Colombia, where he hobnobbed with that country's bigwigs.

There has been no response from City Hall to our complaint centering on the woeful Holiday street-lighting along busy, busy N. 10th Street. It's okay, but it could be so much more. As it is, the street lighting is straight out of 1972. The bare minimum, yeah.

Maybe next year, eh?

For now, we end the year with the imagery of the mayor traipsing down some weedy shank of muddy geography in some South Texas ranch in search of some antler-thing to kill. It's a sport, we know. And there are times when the herd has to be thinned for its own sake.

It's just that the mayor & the guns thing that clashes.

A few of his commenters on his Facebook page asked about the meat, one or two or three wondering if the mayor and his family were in for deer meat tamales.

Villalobos is an out & about sort of mayor, very much like Harlingen Mayor Norma Sepulveda. You can see him ambling into Starbucks, into local small eateries, into the newly-opened chic bars and at a whole host of civic activities that often include stops at McAllen ISD schools.

And, yeah, who knows about what comes next for him?

Perhaps a journey to Dark Africa with a fully-packed entourage for a shot at an elephant or a lion.

You have to lock & load if you're going to be a Republican...

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Next Sunday is New Year's Eve. Do you know where your drink is being served? Party, baby. Doll-up and pick me up at seven. And this year bring your own American Express card, sweetheart. We can hardly wait for this damned year to end. Sorry F. Scott, it was just damned, not beautiful.

Much came this Year 2023, most of it bad. There were some good moments, but the overwhelming number of problems suffocated the life out of Cupid, priests and food delivery drivers. A pizza I ordered was duly returned when the driver arrived in a 1950s car with actual fins and I watched him walk to the back, where he lifted the trunk and extracted my pizza.

"Not happening," I told him. "Take it back. I'll call for a refund."

The kid just shrugged his shoulders and got back in his jalopy and rolled out.

That was one chalked up to ridiculousness. I could almost smell the dead cat or rat the kid had in that car's cluttered trunk. It was no place for a hot pizza. But there were oh, so many other moments in the year that all stand out like thumbs busted by a hammer. Where to begin?

Locally, SpaceX blew up to expensive rockets - both with 33 engines - at company's launching pad on Boca Chica in Cameron County. Hundreds were there to see it, all gasping, all oooohing-and-ahhhing as the rockets lifted off, pierced the sky with ease...and then blew up. SpaceX said it was a good thing, part of the getting-to-perfection plan.

Quien sobby, I know.

Things bad around here? Well, a few more inmates at that haunted Cameron County jail died in captivity. The same answers emerged from the sheriff's department. Nothing else came of it. The dead can't find a lawyer.

Things good around here? Those over-achieving kids from Brownsville Veterans Memorial High School had themselves a mighty run, beating ranked, undefeated teams in the state playoffs before losing in the semifinals. Waytogo! Brownsville fell into a days-long funk after the loss, but the kids kept smiling. They knew they had accomplished much.

We kept waiting for a Rio Grande Valley political scandal, but one never came. Not this year. No sexual escapades with men or women not their spouses by our elected or appointed officials, no one caught drunk or with drugs, no resignations of note, hardly a pendejada.

So, this being short for obvious reasons, we can only hope that the last night of the year is a celebratory one for all, a time for one last hug and kiss of the year in a bar or night club.

Make it a tight, nipple-on-nipple hug and a long, wet kiss. The year has been draining, our emotions spent...

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Word in the mean streets and bars have it that she's still the one. Favored to win the Republican Party's nomination for a run at the 34th Congressional District seat, that is. It's a given, only some air seems to have left her Dollar Tree balloon. Mayra Flores has been uncharacteristically quiet.

Does that portend anything?

Probably not, but she needs her A-Game against incumbent Democrat Vicente Gonzalez.

Maybe it's the Christian Holiday that has her in a more-mellow, more-sociable mood. No loud anti-America speeches lately, no pig-like squealing pro-Trump spiels, no yelling and screaming about that Red Wave that never materialized last election, but that she insists will crest here this time around.

Or so she hopes.

Another loss and that'll be that for Mayra. She has hung her hopes and dreams on a Troubled Star. It's an odd situation in that, once, Mayra Flores was a rising star, one coming over the horizon as if a moon and not some shiny, distant celestial body.

Politics can be fruitful...and it can be cruel.

Mayra's fight between now and the November General Election in 2024 will be the moving brawl of her life. She's won and she's lost, once on each count. This next contest could be it for the daughter of Burgos, Mexico who came to this country and gleefully joined a noisy uprising.

What's she going to do if she loses? There is nothing much to fall back on, nothing, in fact...

Well, she could wait two years and then challenge Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn in 2027. The other senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, is up for reelection in 2024...

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PAZ IN OUR TIME...Well, I started going out again after my last goofy relationship and, as always, I ran into that one word that just loops me - feelings. I know I have them all, but my problem is dealing with the feelings of others.

I remember a lovely gal in New Mexico who would tell me I hurt her feelings and it always sounded like "fillings," which threw another image onto the back walls of my skull.

Anyway, it's the cellphone this time.

I have one, but it's not like I use it all that much. "Call me," she said, there near the end. "Chase me. I like to be chased." So, I tried, but it never was enough.

She would call me at midnight after texting a note that said, "Can u talk?" My eyes were rolled up above my top eyelids, asleep to the world and completely unable to chat about the holiday blues. It's a bitch trying to stay up with a woman who needs attention.

I mean, I need it, but not like that.

In any case, when I last saw her what I said was this: "Try the being-alone thing, baby. It'll settle your bones."

She walked away...and, not surprisingly, I haven't heard from her in a week...

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WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT?...Four comfortable Republicans taking to the stage to debate. For what? This fulsome foursome will soon fade into the rotting woodwork, not to be heard from for long months. It's Hell being a Nobody in a Party of Clowns.

We'll ID the four GOPers shown above for the police: Chris Christie, ex-governor of New Jersey; Nikki Haley, ex-governor of South Carolina, Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and Vivek Ramaswamy, a Nobody.

They showed-up and tried. All are well-spoken college grads, most with some political experience, Haley rumored to have had an affair with a blogger and Christie one with a Pappadeaux's Sampler Plate.

We feel sorry for these people.

The national press and most of the free world has known that their partisan colleague, one Donald J. Trump, has been the anointed one, known it for a long freakin' time. But, bless their beating hearts, they debated. Debated the issues, as if it meant something.

It meant nothing...

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OBITS:...If we can ever say that a city fell into a deep holiday funk, well, maybe Brownsville is it. One of its admired citizens died days before Christmas and there were words of sadness moving across town. Everyone's got a good memory of local Ben R. Neece, the former municipal court judge and ex-city commissioner.

Neece died while at a gym. He was 68.

And, well, how does a community grieve the passing of one of its best & brightest?

Brownsville did it well, honoring Neece pretty much at every turn - in the newspaper, on Facebook and other social media, on the local blogs and at a well-attended memorial.

Neece had his small warts, but readily counted on an upstanding reputation.

Brownsville's reaction came quickly, grieving on the minds of many from the very moment they heard the news. The city doesn't have many citizens of note.

Ben Neece was one... 

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TACO TUESDAY out...

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SEASON'S GREETINGS:... ..."Happy Christmas" To All Who Come Here...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...It's been a fun year, all in all. Yes, friends and family have passed on, to that better place way up there in the sky. Pain and sadness always came with the deal. But, as we like to say in these ragged times, Hope is Eternal.

And that is the promise of Christmas Day.

The new year arrives next week, already weighed down by a host of unresolved social problems made even worse by our inferior politics. Man was not made for enduring success, not for the collective. Sadly, stubborn failure seems to have found a home in the country and on the planet.

We're better than that.   

Make 2024 something to remember; make it your best year yet...

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SUN RECORDS:...Newsroom Jukebox..."Christmas Without You"...

MITCH:...Republican Leader Mum On Trump's Colorado Problem...McConnell Leaves Baked Cheeto Twisting In The Wind...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...Not a peep. Mitch is not talking. Neither are some other prominent Republicans who likely can't stand Donald J. Trump but won't say it in public. There are those Republicans, yes. Perhaps even more and more these days.

Trump has been kicked off the Colorado ballot and is awaiting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on that GOP colon lavage, but Mitch McConnell is not among Republicans defending the Mar-a-Lago Marvel. No, not even a partisan peep from McConnell.

The Senate Minority Leader is standing down on that decision by the Rocky Mountain State's supreme court that would effectively prevent Trump from winning a single Colorado vote, this on the basis that Trump violated the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment when he spawned an insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Has Ted Cruz said anything?

John Cornyn, Cruz's Lone Star State colleague in the U.S. Senate? Texas Gov. Greg Abbott?

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has energized his weird frontal lobe in calling for removal of Democrat Joe Biden, the president. That would be words of retaliation. But action?

We haven't seen anything yet.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to resolve the Colorado decision as early as January 4th, with Colorado expecting a quick ruling as it must certify its ballots by the following day. Ten or twenty years ago, we'd have had a smidgen of confidence in the nation's High Court.

Today, it is a mere shadow of its old self, as they say in Brownsville blogging.

Citizen confidence in the court is at an all-time low, dumb wanton bribery soiling reputations of at least two long-time associate justices, Clarence "Hand Out" Thomas and Samuel "Fly Me To Alaska" Alito - both appointed by Republicans.

It's a biggie, if we can still use that word in our ever-shocking national politics.

A ruling against Colorado would quickly bring Trump laughter of the sort often seen only in circuses when the bear falls off the barrel while the trainer whips his butt. A loss by Trump's side would, it is being said, bring an avalanche of similar rulings from other states not quite enamored with the dictator-in-waiting Orange Cheeto.

This ruling will come.

No punting of the case to a lower court.

No wimpish let-the-voters-decide-this shit from Chief Justice John Roberts, the court's babysitter. And it strikes me that this quietness coming from no-nonsense Republican Mitch McConnell is something of a foreboding dark cloud for Trump. In senate circles, Mitch still holds sway.

Has Willard "Mitt" Romney said anything? He openly hates Trump with a passion. The U.S. Senator from Utah usually has something to say on these things. Not on the Colorado ruling, however. Mitt isn't saying shit.

We could keep waxing poetic here, but we're merely marking time. Waiting on the High Court's ruling, like most Americans. It's the New National Pastime. Baseball is dead. Pro football is rigged. Basketball will never shed that annoying up & down the court bouncing and tennis shoe screeching on polished wooden floors that roil brain cells faster than a fellatio al fresco romp with porn star Stormy Daniels.

Say something, Mitch...

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[EDITOR'S NOTE:...Photo of ugly woman above is gratuitous...]

THE NATIONAL TIT:...For Tat, We Mean...Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Goeb Threatens To Kick Democrat Joe Biden Off State Ballots...Is This America, Or What?...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

AUSTIN, Texas |...Dan Patrick, the flinty Lt. Gov. of Texas, has threatened to take President Joe Biden off state ballots, this in response to Colorado taking similar aim at his fellow Republican Donald J. Trump.

Here we go again, as Dolly Parton might say about here.

This cheap tit-for-tat keeps getting sillier and sillier. We say that as the Republican-led House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. readies its wacko impeachment of Democrat Biden. 

Patrick, the Houston native whose real last name is the very-German "Goeb," tends to be a bit emotional. And wildly partisan. But he's not alone on this one, nope. Republicans in three other so-called Red States, those governed by Republican politicians, have now echoed Patrick's call.

Should we laugh, or be worried?

I say we should laugh. But do take a moment to again wonder exactly where your country is on the civility meter. Off the charts, Baby - that's where. Patrick's threat is no more excitable than much of what is playing out in MAGA World.

The newspaper in Detroit now has a tape recording in which then-President Trump urged one of those quirky, quite illegal moves to draw votes his way in Michigan during the 2020 election he ultimately lost to Biden. It is yet some more ammo for federal prosecutor Jack Smith, who quickly jumped on the subpoena train to get his hands on the recording.

Trump is still in the crosshairs.

Yet, even with the ever-growing mountain of legal stuff against him, Trump remains as politically strong as ever, as seemingly above the law as ever. You'd think that time has stood still. At some point, the meaningful trials will begin, only it won't be, like, anytime soon. March, they say, for one of his criminal cases, although he's never done appealing some aspect of his legal troubles, so...

Of course, it's not just him.

The Republican Party, once a staid operation with names like Dwight D. Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush, is now the tough and mean Chicago Bears of 1985. Sure, perhaps even the cold and cruel Hell's Angels of Gonza Journalist Hunter S. Thompson's day. Oh, maybe yes, a coat & tie cartel of chubby men and chubbier women, a few trailer park loudmouths.

They're going to speak loudly, damn everybody else for America's troubles, dump on immigrants, blame the country's demise on those "poisoning" its blood - a blood, btw, that is whole hog mixed as all Hell is mixed with human losers. Who has the pure blood anymore? Not this reporter...and likely not you, either.

And certainly not those crazy, but maybe not so crazy Anglos who annually claim a drop or two of Native American blood for this and that government benefit, secondary education especially. You can look it up. It's there, there every year, without fail. Funny, but factual, yes.

Poisoning the country's blood, Trump says.

I dunno. Our millions of mixed-race people seem to be okay, living the American Way, wearing designer shirts and jeans, blouses and skirts and dating and going out to dinner and to wedding chapels in Vegas and to divorce courts in town - just like those with "non-poisoned" blood. Yeah, those two or three incest-spawned Americans.

You want to know where to look for Americans being Americans? I mean Americans of all colors enjoying each other - Porn. This much is true: Naked in bed, you're not a Republican or a Democrat. You're alive and living La Vida Loca, which is what the U.S. has been doing for the last 60-70 years. Porno. Black on white, white moaning it. Trump lived that life in New York during the lovely racial Disco heyday of the 1980s and early-1990s. At clubs like Studio 54 in Manhattan, where the booze and harder stuff and the thin African princesses danced until dawn, with the Trumps and the Jaggers and the rest of the sex-is-good crowd.

Poisoned blood? More like alcoholed blood.   

No, don't define America as being either Republican or Democrat.

These days, it's a shithole. Politically and, in a helluva lot of cases, socially.

Donald Trump, a lifelong New York Democrat who saw Republicans and knew he could buffalo them into lapping him with a presidential nomination, labeled a bunch of other countries as being "shitholes" and then delivered a red, white and blue outhouse right here, all by himself, with no opposition from his new political allies. None. Well, Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, but those two were castrated by the party.

Blood-thirsty Republicans will keep clawing at the national bark, knowing full-well that no tree can survive losing its covering.

They seem to not care.

They seem to want another America altogether...There are only so many white, supple breasts in the country...

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THE LAW:...Is Trump Above It All?...Does The Constitution Have To Spell It Out Word For Word?...He Thinks So...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McAllen, Texas |...It would be too simplistic to say that no one was above the law in this country until Donald J. Trump arrived on the political scene. Law, as many of us know, can at times be twisted in interpretation or, worse yet, ignored. The recent impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton comes to mind. He beat it, but it was a political not a legal ruling in the State Senate.

This well-known concept of "No One Is Above The Law" is currently playing like a moveable feast across the abused national landscape. Americans and Talking Head lawyers, especially, are eating it up.

This much is true: Republican Trump is the current lightning rod in a slew of stare downs at our Constitution, rightly or wrongly.

He is under indictment on several fronts, clearly for inciting a riot that saw the U.S. Capitol trashed by his supporters and for attempting to overturn the 2020 election with strong-arm tactics aimed at vote-counting officials in Georgia. This, too: Four separate criminal cases, a trial slated to start in March.

So far, he remains free, thus forcing thoughts into the minds of many Americans that he is untouchable, i.e. above the law and not subject to prosecution. Is he? Well, until he robs a bank or guns someone down, Trump's fights are nebulous as fuck, as kids today like to say. He loudly claims immunity, noting that some of what he said and did took place while he was president from 2016 to January 2021. That's dubious, but out there.

The Capitol assault on January 6, 2021 is blamed on Trump. He gave a rousing "rigged election" speech in Washington D.C. that protestors later told courts inspired them to go and mess with the vote certification giving the presidency to Democrat Joe Biden at the nearby Capitol. Armed protestors heard Trump's call for action and then walked over and stormed in, injuring security police officers and menacing members of Congress in the building.

It was a sad day for America. Hundreds of those protestors were later arrested, charged and tried - a handful for sedition, earning them lengthy prison terms.

Trump got nothing in the form of punishment. Two efforts to impeach him while president were rejected by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate. He left office, but not before a vigorous attempt to overturn the election he lost, agreeing to a variety of plots that included fake state electors, fake allegations of voter fraud and one harried telephone call by Trump to Republican elections officials in Georgia, where he asked that they find him some 11,000 votes so that he could claim victory there.

Nothing has come of that yet, although Trump was indicted in Fulton County, Georgia (Atlanta) and is scheduled to eventually stand trial there on charges of violating federal racketeering laws (RICO). He recently completed testimony in his business fraud trial in New York, where he was found guilty but stood to a trial on how much that conviction will cost him dollars.

To date, he has paid little. A small fine here and there, nothing substantive.

That could soon change, although Trump continues on his quest of the presidency with almost a year left before the November 2024 General Election. A bump in the road has surfaced in Colorado, where the State Supreme Court kicked him off the ballot. That led to an immediate filing before the U.S. Supreme Court, where Colorado asked justices to affirm their ruling.

The High Court is expected to take on the case as early as January 4th, one day before Colorado certifies its ballots for the coming elections. It's iffy for Trump, we say, even as conservative legal minds insist the Supreme Court will side by Trump. They cite the fact that Trump has not been charged or convicted of anything.

Those with an opposing view say the Supreme Court will go against him, noting that states' matters belong to the state and adding that the conservative Court, troubled of late by ethics missteps, may side by Colorado as a way to reclaim some of its damaged credibility.

The latter is a weak assessment, but it's out there.

So, is Donald J. Trump above the law, or is "above the law" just another throwaway cliche for politicians to lob at constituents when they want to and to ignore when they have to?

So far, yes and yes.

There's this food for thought, however: That nagging "rule of law" thing. As we have learned it, the rule of law means that everyone must obey the law and that no one is above the law. The government and its leaders must obey the law, goes the Civics 101 line.

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment in the U.S. Constitution speaks to equal protection of the law. That is the equivalent, or implication, that no one is above the law. Not that all Americans are buying it in Trump's case. He has dead-serious supporters who are willing to look the other way on every attack he launches on America and its once-hallowed past.

The Constitution was written in 1787.

Trump has certainly been bashed about by the law since he left office three years ago. He often blames Democrats, the opposing political party, and no one else for his legal problems, and he always gets the quick, rallying support of his so-called rabid MAGA followers. They agree with him that his troubles are nothing but a witch hunt. The witch is Uncle Sam, however, and Uncle Sam has all the power.

It's a bit more than a run-of-the-mill witch hunt, however.

This is an openly racist/bigoted politician working the Constitution like he likely worked porn star Stormy Daniels in that infamous sexual affair. Lately, those around him have bravely said he does not believe in the U.S. Constitution, working it only when it suits him and roughing it up for his own survival - law and citizenship be damned.

Ominous Quote: "In our system of government, as this Court has often stated, no one is above the law. That principle applies, of course, to a President..." - Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, 2020

I was going to say it's some conundrum, but it's more than that.

It's a filthy, stinking mess...ugly and dangerous...

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AMERIKA:...Supreme Court Decision On That Colorado Disqualification Of Trump Will Tell If He's Above The Law...He's Not...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas |...There are hours and hours and hours of independent video. Countless news reports with pertinent quotes. Reviews after the fact. Investigations by Congress. Looksees into law-breaking. Indictments.

Donald Trump was there, and he was the instigator of the January 6, 2021 riot on the U.S. Capitol building.

No one disputes that it happened.

The argument raging across the country from sea to shining sea is whether the countless of seditious convictions of many of those who stormed the Capitol should rest at the feet of Trump, the former president now again seeking the office.

That ruling in Colorado that disqualified him from being on the state ballot quickly drew anger and wild, weird responses from his fellow Republicans- some even saying the decision is the spark to the coming Civil War.

Balderdash!

Civil war? By those same armed brave ones who trashed the Capitol, were arrested and then cried mightily in court, begging for forgiveness and lesser prison sentences? Uh, no. No one is going to do squat, it says here. Rednecks love McDonald's too much to throw the country into wanton bedlam.

Maybe a loose-brain yahoo, or two. And perhaps a judge or Democrat politician will be assassinated for show, but, no, don't count on overland coast-to-coast battlefields. If it starts, it will be put down quickly and viciously. Most Americans have had it with this Trump Bullshit. He's like shit, everywhere.

Word has it that the Colorado Ruling will be overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court, that the conservative-led body will not allow the courts to decide a national election, that Trump has not been tried, much less convicted, of staging the Capitol insurrection, that the people will decide Trump's fate at the ballot box.

That would be wrong as Hell is wrong for Christians.

Trump made his renegade bed after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, lost by almost 3 million votes. He labeled it a "rigged" election and did his damndest to overturn the vote by way of public discourse that emboldened yahoos to the point of law-breaking.

He's still with the wacko idea of killing Democracy by way of racism and bigotry, and, well, his allegiance to dead and living dictators - as if to alert America of his intent to become one if elected.

Trump will NOT be elected president ever again.

Bank it.

He's got his fans and followers, but they are simply not enough. Government machinations are such that threats such as this one usually find a solution. The United States is not going Russia or China anytime soon.         

Plus, the Supreme Court would be setting itself up to be mightily embarrassed. Federal prosecutor Jack Smith has a huge amount of evidence he will soon present about Trump's efforts to subvert the election. There is going to be testimony by ex-Vice President Mike Pence, Trump's own texts and phone calls, testimony from staff.

It will show he committed insurrection.

So, were the Supreme Court to say Trump didn't know...they would look damned foolish.

But Trump does have three of his appointees on the country's High Court (three of nine), so prankster games are not necessarily out of the realm of possibility. He expects loyalty from everyone but himself. A vote endorsing the Colorado Ruling would surprise many, although, for this particular court, it would be the beginning of a return to credibility.

Trump is NOT above the law.

He will be told, and he will be shown...

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APPEAL:...2023 "Word Of The Year"...Reptilian Republican Donald Trump Avails Himself Of It At Every Turn...Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...He's appealing. Again. Another court ruling he does not like. Doing it quickly and vigorously. That's who Donald J. Trump is these days, a litigator.

Trump is in the 2024 running for president as a reptilian Republican.

He's also being chased by the legal system at every turn. Should we care that he's a serious candidate while fighting for his freedom? Is he just exercising his rights? Does the well-known phrase "Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied" apply to him?

How long has this been going on?

Too long. Trump threatens to become the poster boy for Outlaw Law. His latest opportunity to appeal a hit came yesterday.

This from politico.com: [ The ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday that Donald Trump, by virtue of inciting an insurrection, was ineligible to appear on the state’s 2024 ballots threatened yet another massive stress test for America’s governing institutions.

But it also quickly underscored the extraordinary messiness of a presidential campaign litigated as much in the courtroom as on the campaign trail - with cases sprawling across multiple jurisdictions, a cast of characters rivaling a Russian novel and a former president who has perfected the art of working the legal system to his advantage over decades of close brushes with the law. ]

His camp is already making the case that all judges in the Colorado case are - egads! - Democrats. That's the lawyers speaking. Trump had harsher words, and will have harsher words until he wins or loses in the General Election.

According to the reporting, Colorado's ruling will find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court for its two-cents worth as early as January 4th. Ballots in Colorado must be in place by the following the day, the 5th.

But, yeah, how many appeals to court rulings have we had from the Mar-a-Lago Marvel?

Too many.

For a guy who forever claims to be innocent, he sure has no faith in his "facts." Trump claws and fights every step of way, more like some jail-fearing street-savvy criminal than an innocent man...

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TACO TUESDAY:......Island Tacos...Capt. Bob & Nefertiti ...Comb Over Hasse...Ben's Other Office... Dairy Neck Barton...Photo Of The Year ...The Scribbler McHale...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas |...This is the penultimate (next to last) Taco Tuesday of the year that was 2023, and we can say that it's been a roaring success from the outset. Although it has leaned heavily on Brownsville and Brownsville characters, plans have it that it will go valleywide in 2024.

There certainly are others in the region worthy of our attention.

And unlike the sedated bloggers of Browntown, The Sun will not fall back from its features. Once there was a Stormy Monday in town, but Blogger Dairy Neck Jim Barton quickly laid down on the job after one offering. Elderly Blogger Jerry McHale's wimpish, junior high version of Taco Tuesday died 'cause he could not keep it up, as happens when you turn 74 years old.

This Taco Tuesday will stay the course.

Herewith, then, is this week's episode... 

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...If the fast-fading Capt. Bob Sanchez can take a photograph with the purposeful Republican rat, Mayra Sanchez, then all bets are off this bugger of a political season. There he was, standing chingon with the Nefertiti of The Rio Grande, while seeming to say, "Uppa yo ass!" to all in town.

Miss Flores, age 38, is the favorite to win the party's primary next March and then set her crazed sights on Democrat incumbent Vicente Gonzalez in that 34th Congressional District Jell-o & Mud rasslin' PayPerView show.

Sanchez, a late-late blooming (nobody believes him) Republican, has about as much importance in South Texas politics as any other bald-headed eat, shave and shit dude. Will it matter for Mayra? Uh, no. She could pose with Pro-Mexicans Blogger Juan Montoya next and it would mean even less. The girl is hot in her own panties, boys. Let's not even think about saying, "Oh, I support seafood and Mayra Flores!"

The captain, who is a captain of nothing, loves taking photos with newsmakers. He's really a "Nobody" in winning politics, but, like the local bloggers, thinks he's Big Shit just cause he offers a podcast in which he seems to fakes a Mexican accent that sure sounds like impacted turds dying to come out of his ass.

Hey, Mayra, sweetheart, go take a photo with John Cowen, the mayor rumored to be a Republican.

He's half-bald, and that may mean something to the district's fickle voters.

Captain Bob is supposed to have spaced teeth that makes it easier to lie, is what a local blogger once told us. But, yeah, who knows. It just could be that the captain is merely one of those humans who sees pain and smiles, who sees death and laughs out loud.

A funny sort of guy and nothing more, yeah...

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Well, he lost his last election by 29,000 to a high school dropout. Charles "Tad" Hasse, shown with crazed comb-over in photo above, wanted a seat on the State Board of Education (SBOE), only incumbent Ruben Cortez stood in the way. Stood in the way!!! Shit, Ruben slammed the damned door in Hasse's aging face!

That was four years ago, and now the Libertarian/Democrat/Republican Hasse (his name means "Rabbit" in Germany) wants to be the Cameron County Republican Party's chair. His opponent in the party contest will be one Deborah Bell, a healthy-looking chick with all of her hair.

Hasse has known little success in politics, having taken it up the ass in several other elections for several other posts. His political resume, you may say, is one defeat after another, beatings that may have taken some salt off his skin the night of the results, but, like acne, he's still there into old age.

A Trumpian from early-on, Hasse can be a however-whiney loud cat.

In that last campaign, he was scolded down by then-GOP County Chair Morgan Graham for seeking the extermination of all Democrats in a speech upstate. Hasse sort of apologized, if dead silence is an apology.

But he has some support, at least from the wishy-washy, mollusk-like blogging community. Pro-Mexicans Blogger Juan Montoya, usually an anti-Trump dude, has posted a rather clean story about Tad's latest bid for office. Fellow Dairy Neck blogger Jim Barton also has gone slacker in covering Hasse's campaign. We expect Elderly-About-Town Blogger Jerry McHale to fall-in with the blogging faction and push Hasse to the starting line in a semi-positive way.

There really isn't much there in Hasse's political background to ballyhoo - he's done nothing!

Hasse's nickname of "Tad," he has written, is a contraction of his childhood nickname of "Tadpole," which is not good in the rough & tumble Political World.

Tadpole?

Uh, no...

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Five days before he died on December 12, Ben Neece posted the photo you see above on his Facebook page and let friends know the scene would be his "office" on that particular Thursday evening.

I can't tell you the name of venue, but suffice it to say that it likely was downtown - Ben's backyard throughout most of his adult life. They say he could hear just about every musical note ever played in that part of town.

Neece died at age 68 while at a local gym.

He will be buried at 1:00 p.m. this Saturday over at Buena Vista Cemetery on McDavitt Road. The Heart of The Weekend is a most appropriate time for Ben's last goodbye to a city he loved. a funeral ceremony is the correct send-off for every human being, although we do know others see many options to the traditional memorials and graveside service.

Ben Neece at a cemetery evokes imagery of Ben playing his music for someone else's passing.

In this case, we are pretty sure his family and his many, many friends will be there to observe the interment and to remember a song or two they recall hearing over the years from Neece and Neece's musical band.

It is definitely a goodbye.

But Ben had a way of sticking around at his downtown club after being on stage or seeing other musicians on stage.

No doubt, he'll stay in the memories of a good amount of people, here and wherever else he went and made friends...

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He still will not answer. Dairy Neck Blogger Jim Barton, the 76-year-old news reporter wannabe, guards his reasons for not serving in the U.S. military back when he was definitely of draft-age during the Vietnam Conflict.

And he will not say how far he got in school. High school, we mean, as he did not go to college.

We chase his butt down every week on this because Barton sees himself as some journalism cop who can go after public servants and politicians, many of them military veterans who do not need this clown chasing them down as if he's somebody.

Barton is a Societal Nobody.

His employment resume is thin, thinner than that of a hard-working illegal alien washing dishes at a local eatery or a maid working all sectors of the community. Barton's jobs were of the hourly, minimum wage variety - at grocery stores, motels and on the shrimp boat docks at the Port of Brownsville.

We've asked, but he will not say where else he has worked, when up in North Texas or in incest-happy Arkansas with his late-wife Nenny.

Should we care about this guy's unaccomplished past? Sometimes, we tell ourselves that no, we should not. he's free to "act" out any part he wishes in this home of the brave and land of the free - even if he never has paid his debt to freedoms he enjoys.

And this week, we're not even going deep into that Great Story that is his donation of his dead wife's body to science in April of 2019. I mean, who does that? In the Rio Grande Valley, we mean.

Little Hands Barton (he ragged Republican hellion Donald Trump about his small hands, btw) did it, and he's okay with it.

Perhaps someday he'll open-up, let loose serious stuff he keeps well-closeted for reasons that may affect his standing in town. Until he does, those of us with our questions will keep them handy and waiting on an opening, perhaps on some emotion Barton lets go when his insecurities rise as if weeds against a lawnmower...

Old cat Barton, who plays at being a real member of the press, should know that the press is accountable, too...

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Our PHOTO OF THE YEAR. Donald Trump being booed and saluted with the middle finger at an Iowa Hawkeyes football game this Fall. The photo, one of several showing fans shooting Trump the finger, was widely-circulated in new stories and social media. 

The imagery is priceless.

There is, we say, nothing like the American middle finger salute. Its message is immediate and unmistakable. You suck! Fuck off! Sit on this, Mofo! It's a very visible diss absolutely. You shoot someone the finger and you're telling them you hate their ass. One more stare and it's Fight City!!!

In Brownsville, the middle finger is as popular as the two-tortilla taco.

You get a bad waiter at a good taqueria and down goes the taco and the waiter. Trump felt it, we're sure. He felt the hate he engenders in Good Americans. They would rather kick his face in than see him as any sort of political star.

In fact, we're sure Trump's face is atop the list of fucktards people in this country want to fuck up...

-0-

He likes to think of himself as some accomplished writer, but Elderly Blogger Jerry McHale is nothing of the sort. He's a retired ESL teacher with a laptop and nothing more. What's he written that's anywhere near memorable? Not a damn thing, says the stadium crowd.

There is no signature sentence. No creative language. No unique plotting. No character worth remembering. No paragraph of note. No self-published book worth a quarter.

But the 74-year-old McHale does hold hard to his Irish penchant for attacks and insults. Once he had a very good friend by the name of Tony Zavaleta. Today, he doesn't. Not after that Welding Recital disaster McHale offered this past summer that had Tony Z fuming.

Once he could sit down for a few chelas with pro-Mexicans Blogger Juan Montoya. Today, he can't. Not after calling Juan the third-best blog writer in Brownsville. Behind him and non-college Dairy Neck Jim Barton!!!

Once, he had local attorney and former municipal court judge Ben Neece as the one always at his side. Not anymore. Ben died last week and McHale cried his woe-is-me poetry on his nursing home blog. No, Maria, let's once and for all dispense of any notion saying this guy is a writer.

He's not, not of Real Journalism and certainly not of sentient fiction.

McHale turned out to be the city's loudest wannabe - that's all...

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TACO TUESDAY out...

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MEIN DRUMPH:...Caught In A Trap, Donald Trump Raises Ante On Racism...Immigrants "Poisoning" His Blood...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

RENO, Nevada |...He came and said it aloud here again over the weekend. Blood from Africa and south of the border keeps coming here and "poisoning our blood." Donald J. Trump, the oft-indicted Republican candidate for president, loves to quote Nazi Adolf Hitler and a passel of other dictators.

He conveniently forgets how long the United States has been an immigrant country. He ignores the fact that a bit more than 10% of our population lists itself as of mixed-blood ancestry, a number experts say would grow dramatically if genetic testing would ever be considered and done.

But it's nothing new with him.

Trump, whose real last name is Drumph, a loser name his German-immigrant father dropped after coming to this country, has been at it for the entirety of his adult life. How long did he rag former President Barack Obama about that birth certificate Trump said would show Obama had been born in Africa and was not eligible for the presidency.

How long did he crow about the so-called Central Park 5 after five African-Americans were (as it turned out) wrongly arrested and jailed in connection with the rape of a white woman out on an evening jog. Trump bought full-page Ads in the New York Times ahead of their trial, seeking the Death Penalty.

No, his racism is not anything new, although, funny as it may seem, two of his three wives have been immigrants.

So, no, it was no surprise on Saturday when he again continued with his bigoted ways at a rally here.

This from NBCnews.com: [ Trump said immigrants coming to the U.S. are "poisoning the blood of our country," a remark on Saturday that quickly drew a rebuke from his chief Democratic rival as President Joe Biden’s campaign likened the words to those of Adolf Hitler.

"They let - I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country," Trump also told the crowd at a rally in New Hampshire. "That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world."

Trump then repeated the use of "poisoning" in a post on his social media website Truth Social, saying overnight in an all-caps post, that "illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions - from all over the world."

The term "blood poisoning" was used by Hitler in his manifesto "Mein Kampf (My Struggle)," in which he criticized immigration and the mixing of races. "All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning," Hitler wrote. ]

That "originally creative race" is funny, but, then, Hitler seems to have had little knowledge of where the Human DNA originated: Africa.

The Doomsday racial terminology seems to be working with a certain segment of our population, the so-called Republican Base.

As could be expected, a number of high-profile Americans fired back at the Mar-a-Lago Marvel, with The White House leading the way. Republican Chris Christie, a second-tier candidate for president in the current campaign, labeled it "disgusting."

Trump kept at it. He quoted Russian dictator Vladimir Putin who'd said "rottenness" in the American Democracy would be the end of this country. It gets to where if a dictator said something about the U.S., Trump is going to use it against the U.S.

He's fighting 91 felony counts in court, a fraud trial in New York that could be the end of his quirky real estate business empire, election games in Georgia and a federal indictment related to his taking classified documents when he departed the White House in early 2021.

What else is he supposed to do but inflame the country's racist emotions?

Trump has reached the point that he can realistically be considered hysterically paranoid...it's just too bad that we still have to count him as an American...

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