Tag archives: Republicans
As I write this, the Republican Party is holding the entire world hostage. The immediate issue is the “debt ceiling.” The threat is very real. If the debt ceiling is not raised, the U.S. government could default on its loans. This has never happened before. The debt ceiling is about repaying money that has already […]
In recent years, it has become a ritual for Republicans to threaten to shut down the government and crash the U.S. economy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. This is like finishing your meal in a restaurant and refusing to pay the bill. These childish tantrums are in direct violation of the 14th Amendment: […]
The 2010 midterm election for President Obama brought a devastating change in Congress. But, what did it mean? I happened to be listening to San Francisco talk radio KGO for several hours just before that election. The host asked people to call in, offering this framing of the issue: President Bush made a mess of […]
With the 4th of July Holiday just past, it is more important than ever to reflect on the Nation’s founding “energy,” what the Germans would call our Zeitgeist. Famously observed, America is not a nation that arose due to geographic isolation of a singular genealogical population, as the British Isles or Japan. Nor did it […]
Bobbi McGinnis is the current Chair of the Santa Barbara County GOP committee, a position she has had since 2019, after being its secretary and committee member since 2013. She is a first-generation U.S. born citizen. Her parents moved to the U.S. from England in 1949, choosing Santa Barbara as their new home, with her […]
In the political swamp that has ensnared our democratic republic a glimmer of something we haven’t seen for almost six years is on the horizon: the emergence of a fissure in the Republican party, which has lately been in the grips of Mr. Trump’s remarkably single-handed control as it morphed into the Cult of Trump. […]
The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse has galvanized the country, splitting already “warring factions” into something far more dramatic. The travesty of that trial began with the systematic exclusion of Black jurors and was further amplified by a clearly biased and incompetent judge: he openly fought with the prosecution in front of the jury, denied them […]
We may look at circumstances in our society and wonder how our leaders could be so inept as to let those happen. Immigration chaos, the 2008 financial crisis and widening entitlements to name a few. Perusing the Democrat Party tactics initiated in the 1960s by Columbia University professors Richard Cloward and Frances Piven can clear […]
Robert Muller, the deceased Santa Barbara resident and globally known United Nations official who many of us admired, famously observed: “Use every letter you write, Every conversation you have, Every meeting you attend,To express your fundamental beliefs and dreams…”. I was reminded of this wisdom as I pored over the numerous letters we received from our last […]
After receiving his second shot of Pfizer COVID vaccine, Carlos the Bear was relaxing in his den reading the Montecito Association’s most current email blast. He was eating some tasty takeaway from Pane e Vino and saw that a Town Hall Meeting will be held on Wednesday, May 19 at 5:30 pm, regarding his troublesome […]
Yeah! Sounds like a great way to celebrate California achieving the status two weeks ago of the state with the lowest background infection rate of all 50 (still true as of this writing). How about a party to celebrate how much fun it is to meet friends and neighbors on Coast Village Road and State […]
Republicans have railed against deficit spending for decades. But, every Republican president since 1981 has increased the Federal deficit. Only the Democratic presidents Clinton and Obama have lowered it. When the Democrats are in office, the Republicans oppose any plans to increase government spending, claiming that we can’t afford it. Even though they have no […]
We are deeply dismayed to learn that Das Williams is seeking an appointment to the California Coastal Commission for the Central Coast. A controversial supervisor synonymous with Santa Barbara’s much-contested cannabis ordinance, Williams was barely able to retain his position in 2020 (even with the political and financial muscle of the cannabis industry). Indeed, there […]
As a 66-year-old downtown businessman Randy Rowse is no stranger to Santa Barbara city politics. In 1983, Rowse opened the Paradise Café across the street from the Santa Barbara News-Press; last year he sold the joint, which has now been re-christened La Paloma Café. A longtime Democrat, Rowse dropped his party affiliation in the 1990s, […]
Joe Scarborough was a conservative US Congressman until 2001. He represented Florida’s 1st Congressional District, which Scarborough affectionately refers to as “The Red Neck Riviera.” He also occasionally calls it “LA” for “lower Alabama” as the extremely conservative District is in Florida’s Panhandle just below Alabama. He currently hosts an extremely popular daily cable news […]
The February 18 edition of this column carried an impassioned plea for the two political parties, which together represent less than 50 percent of the voters, to let our people go! To let us pass into real democracy from the shared monopoly in U.S. politics that the Democrats and Republicans jointly control to their advantage, […]
One hundred and thirty-nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted, after the insurrection (which sacked the Capitol building and took five lives), to support the mob’s demands to overturn the results of the recent presidential election. An election found, after sixty meritless legal challenges, to have been a free and fair exercise in […]
Capitol Offense Like most Americans, I was distressed last week when rioters at the instigation of Donald Trump invaded and trashed the Capitol. It was even more upsetting for my wife, Mary, who worked twelve years on Capitol Hill. I covered Congress for Ridder Publications before going to The Washington Post and have been in […]
‘Copter Conundrum We have a real threat going right now. A real one. A resident of Summerland is asking for two helipads on his private property in Summerland. This is after he has admitted that he has been illegally landing and taking off from this same property for 25 years. He has built a “helicopter […]
Stunned and Irredeemable I’m stunned… and so is an insignificant handful of fellow irredeemable voters. Give it a couple weeks and stout-hearted Republicans will eventually accept the mostly-legal ballot results. I think it’s uncertain whether deplorable conservatives will reconcile, forgive, join hands, sing Kumbaya and fully cooperate with the new administration, like the democrats did […]
