national news

Are we really ready to repeat this fluke?

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I have written of Donald Trump’s election as president as being the greatest political fluke in U.S. history.

Hardly no one saw it coming in 2016. The pundit class, all the political “experts” believed to their core that Hillary Clinton would be elected. She wasn’t. Instead we got a guy who had never sought public office, let alone ever held one. Many of us predicted he would be a disaster as president of the United States.

I hate saying this — yes, I really do hate it — but he’s proven to be far worse than we thought. The Nitwit in Chief has shredded the presidency. He has destroyed relations between the legislative and executive branches of government. Trump has decimated our international alliances. POTUS has turned us into a worldwide laughingstock.

We have a chance in November to rescue what Trump has damaged. The destruction he has brought to intergovernmental relations can be restored by electing someone who understands how the executive and legislative branches can cooperate and seek common ground. Yes, that would be Joe Biden, the former longtime senator and two-term vice president.

However, the wreckage that Trump has brought will be difficult to clear from the landscape.

Time and time and time again, this president refuses to speak to issues that compel his attention. The issue of race relations has returned to the top of our minds. The death of a black man by a white police officer who choked the life out of him for nearly nine minutes has galvanized a movement. Trump doesn’t speak to that tragedy specifically. Instead he quotes racist cops from more than 50 years ago and drives wedges between Americans, relishing the division he is creating and widening.

Yes, we also have the pandemic. Trump’s initial response was pathetic and rotten to the core. Tens of thousands of Americans have died from COVID-19; there will be tens of thousands more who will die. Trump claims success. For what?

Are we really ready to commit the Greatest Political Fluke 2.0 come November? The polling tells us “no!” Then again, it said the same thing four years ago … and look at what we got.

national news

Trump to accept nomination … in Jacksonville

I guess the Republican National Committee is going to stage its convention in Charlotte, N.C. after all. Donald Trump couldn’t find a suitable venue to switch at the last minute.

You know the story. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, was too concerned about the health of convention attendees to allow them to pack themselves into an arena and be exposed to a killer virus.

But wait! Trump is going to make his nominating acceptance speech in Jacksonville, Fla., more than 300 miles south. I understand he’ll get to speak to a packed arena full of Trumpsters — who will have to sign a waiver absolving the Trump campaign of liability in case they get sick from COVID-19.

Good gracious. Trump is hellbent on staging an event with lots of folks hollering, whoopin’ and cheering his every incoherent rant. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who rushed to get his state reopened after the pandemic shut everything down, is all in on that one.

Even though the Trump team is requiring arena attendees to sign the waiver that says they can’t sue the campaign if they get sick, they’ll still have to live with their conscience if anyone falls ill from the killer viral infection.

That’s presuming, of course, that they have a conscience to bother them about such matters. I have my serious doubts.

national news

What will happen post-Trump?

A critic of High Plains Blogger posed a question to me that I feel compelled to answer with this post.

This critic, a dedicated Donald Trump devotee, wanted to know what I would write about were it not for The Donald’s presence on the national scene. I reminded him that I have written on plenty of non-Trump topics during the past four years. I presume he’s like a lot of us who focus on the things with which we disagree most fervently, causing us to narrow our vision dramatically.

Here is the truth, though, about the future of this blog post-Donald Trump. I am looking forward to weaning myself of Trump-related matters. Whether it’s after this upcoming election (please, please … I hope that’s the case) or after the next one in 2024, I am excited at the prospect of looking beyond the wreckage that this individual has brought to the political stage.

That’s my hope. However, I do have this fear. It is that Donald Trump, as a former president of the United States, is still going to command a lot of attention. He will continue to have his social media access, namely Twitter. I fear, therefore, that Donald Trump is not going to fade away quietly into some sort of post-presidential hibernation the way every one of his predecessors has done.

Surely, some have done so more notably than others. Perhaps the biggest post-presidential tragedy occurred after Ronald Reagan left office in 1989. He retired to California, would emerge on occasion to make a speech, such as when he famously spoke to the 1992 Republican convention in Houston. Then in November 1994, not even six years after leaving the White House, he told the world of his affliction from Alzheimer’s disease. President Reagan bid us farewell … and we never heard from him again.

Donald Trump’s penchant for hogging the limelight won’t allow him to go away quietly. The good news for yours truly, though, is that as a former president he will become decidedly less relevant on matters that count. He will be unable to set policy or issue executive orders. He’ll just be one of the rest of us, using social media to blather on this and/or that subject.

I intend to focus this blog — as I declare in my profile — on issues relating to “politics, public policy and life experience.” Where any of this concerns Donald Trump likely will entail what his successor does to repair the damage Trump inflicted on the presidency.

national news

Trump is ‘fine’ with Gen. Milley’s regret? Sure … I believe that

Photographer: Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Donald Trump says he is “fine” with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley’s expression of regret for taking part in that hideous photo op at the Episcopal church not far from the White House.

Milley, a four-star Army general, said his presence in the walk from the White House to the church where Donald Trump held up a Bible for a goofy photograph to show how much he cares about religion sent the wrong message about the military’s mission. It thrust the military into a partisan political dispute, which Gen. Milley is not in keeping with why he wears the uniform. The entire event was meant to show Trump’s disgust with protesters who have damaged property in response to the George Floyd killing by the police in Minneapolis.

Hey, Trump told Fox News he has no problem with Milley’s push back.

Do you think Trump is telling the truth? Bwahahahaha!

The Liar in Chief’s veracity on anything that flies out of his mouth is open to serious questioning. Were I a betting man I’d say Trump has a serious problem with Gen. MIlley’s remarkable admission that he messed up … except that someone advised Trump to keep his thoughts private.

Unbelievable.

crime news

Trump fumbles chance to deal forthrightly with racial unrest

Donald J. Trump came to North Texas today ostensibly to talk about race relations, about police reform and about how to quell the suspicions of the African-American community about police protection in its neighborhoods.

Well, he didn’t come close to sealing the deal.

Trump spoke to mostly white folks. He snubbed three of Dallas County’s top law enforcement officials — all of whom are black — and talked mostly aloud about the demonstrations that turned riotous in response to George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in late May.

Trump never mentioned George Floyd’s name in public. He talked about the beauty of seeing Minneapolis police use tear gas to disperse demonstrators.

Where was the public acknowledgement that there might, indeed, be a serious problem with police protection in African-American communities? I didn’t hear anything.

I continue to support police efforts to protect and serve the communities they patrol. I am not going to endorse the notion of “systemic racism” within all police departments. I do, though, acknowledge there needs to be serious examination of police practices and there should be a careful and thorough discussion of ways that police departments can ensure that they treat all citizens equally.

I wish Donald Trump would have spoken to all of that while he visited North Texas. He didn’t say a word publicly about police practices. He didn’t say a word about the man whose recent death has galvanized a movement.

Donald Trump failed once again.

national news

Divider in Chief shows his stuff … again!

Donald J. “Divider in Chief” Trump is going to make a splash — bigly! — when he resumes active campaigning for re-election.

He’s going to show up in Tulsa, Okla., on Juneteenth of all days. That’s June 19, the day African-Americans received word in 1865 that they had been freed from enslavement.

But … here’s the kick in the gut. Tulsa is the place where in May 1921 white supremacists massacred African-Americans in what became known as the nation’s most hideous racial confrontation.

It was far more than a riot. It was a full-scale assault on the black community in that city. It killed 36 people, 26 of whom were black.

And this is the place where Donald Trump wants to re-start his re-election campaign, which has been all but suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic. Astonishing, man! And reprehensible. Also despicable. I’ll throw in repulsive to boot!

I don’t buy the notion that Trump is totally ignorant of U.S. history or what Juneteenth means to African-Americans or what Tulsa means to those who abhor racial violence. Instead, I am going to endorse the notion put forth by former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who said recently that Trump is the first president in Mattis’s memory who doesn’t seek to unify the nation, that he works deliberately to divide it.

As I watch Trump re-start his campaign, I will do so with utter disgust that he would deliberately inflame tensions that already are smoldering from the anger created by the death of George Floyd, who was suffocated while in police custody in Minneapolis.

Gen. Mattis appears to be so correct, that this president has no interest in unifying the country.

Sickening.

national news

Biden wonders: Will Trump go quietly?

Joseph R. Biden Jr. has offered an opinion on a subject that has been in the back of minds of many millions of Americans.

Indeed some of us, such as this blogger, have questioned openly whether Donald J. “Psychopath in Chief” Trump would leave office quietly and with dignity were he to lose the November election.

At issue is how Donald Trump would accept the election results if he loses the presidency to Biden. I have wondered aloud about whether Trump would accept the results or whether he would challenge them as “rigged” or “phony.”

Biden, in an interview with late-night comic Trevor Noah, has given additional voice to the notion that Trump might not go quietly.

I am in no position to predict that Trump would resist the results. However, I am willing to declare that nothing would surprise me when it involves Donald Trump. I didn’t hear Biden actually predict a Trump resistance to leaving office; instead I thought I heard Biden suggest that he wouldn’t be surprised, either, if Trump tries some funny business in seeking to cling to power.

Donald Trump has a history of making absurd, unfounded and ignorant claims of voter fraud and corruption. He said in 2016 that millions of voters cast ballots illegally for Hillary Clinton; Trump never produced a shred of truth to it. He has hollered about the threat of voter fraud if Americans are allowed to cast their ballots by mail this year, again with no evidence to back up his specious and dubious assertions.

Now he is facing the distinct possibility — and it’s by no means certain — that he will lose his re-election effort. The man who could defeat him, Joe Biden, is suggesting that Trump’s thirst for power and dominance might not allow him to follow a tradition that began with the election of John Adams in 1796, when the nation’s second president took over from the first president, George Washington.

President Adams established the norm of “peaceful transition of power” that has worked well ever since. Then again, Donald Trump took office in 2017 pledging to be an “unconventional” president. How far he takes his unconventional tenure might become evident if he ends up losing the next presidential election.

crime news

Pass the Pepto; this mystery causes serious heartburn

Some ongoing mysteries at times cause me to think hard about one of the principles I hold dear, which happens to be my opposition to capital punishment.

One of them involves the hideous mystery involving Lori Vallow, the mother of two youngsters who have been missing for months. Vallow and her husband Chad Daybell are suspected of harming her two children: JJ and Tylee, who’ve been missing since September. Vallow hasn’t disclosed where the kids could be. Nor has Daybell.

I do not believe this story is going to end well. Idaho police, where Vallow and Daybell lived, now report finding human remains on property they own … and that the remains appear to be those of children. Are they JJ and Tylee? A DNA exam of the remains will make that determination.

Vallow belongs to some sort of cult. Her prior husband has died, along with Daybell’s previous wife. Others close to the couple have met mysterious deaths.

This is bizarre, ghastly and hideous … all of the above.

And now this individual, Lori Vallow, might be responsible for the deaths of her children?

I hope you understand my angst. My opposition to capital punishment is steeped in what I consider to be a principle that government shouldn’t kill criminals, even those who commit terrible crimes. The last time I felt this kind of angst happened when the madman opened fire in the church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine worshipers in a race-related hate crime.

Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell do not deserve to walk among us. The good news is that they are not. Both of them are locked up. It’s where they need to be for as long as they draw breath.

However, I will not mourn their deaths if that is how the government decides to punish them.

local news

What? Exclude these folks?

Donald J. Trump flew into Dallas today to get ready for a meeting with local authorities on issues relating to police work and race relations.

But … get a load of this. The Nitwit in Chief didn’t invite three key public leaders to attend this event. They are: Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall, Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown and Dallas County District Attorney John Cruezot. What do these individuals have in common? They’re all African-American!

Hmm. Don’t you think they might have something critical to add to any discussion involving law enforcement and race relations? Might they offer some fascinating perspective on how to tackle this growing problem?

Oh, wait … I almost forgot! Brown and Cruezot are Democrats! I don’t know about Chief Hall.

What in the name of inclusivity is happening here?

military news

Joint Chiefs chairman ‘regrets’ taking part in photo op

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U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been bitten by the military honor bug and his reaction to it might incur the wrath of the commander in chief.

To which I say … good for you, Gen. Milley.

The general says now he regrets taking part in that ridiculous photo op staged by Donald Trump in which he walked to St. John Episcopal Church to hold up a Bible. He was accompanied on that stroll by Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Milley, who was dressed in combat fatigues.

Milley said today his presence at the photo op interjected the military into a political scene, which is anathema to the military’s mission. The episode was centered on protests over racial injustice by local police departments. Trump thought he’d respond to it by prancing over to the church and holding up a Bible in a ridiculous display of phony religiosity.

As The Associated Press reported: He said his presence in uniform amid protests over racial injustice “created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

There you have it. The battle-tested veteran realizes that he erred in taking part in a stupid political stunt. What’s more, and this could get tricky, is that he well might draw incoming fire from Nimrod in Chief who dislikes any form of criticism from any quarter. When, then, will Donald Trump do? Is he going to “fire” the Joint Chiefs chairman for standing on principle?

Well, he’s done something like that before. Such as when he fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia “thing”; or when he fired Defense Secretary James Mattis for disagreeing with Trump on Middle East policy; or when he fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for challenging Trump’s policy decisions on the basis of whether they were lawful; or when he fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to declare total loyalty to Trump.

Gen. Milley shouldn’t lose his job over his expression of regret. Then again, Donald Trump shouldn’t even be in a position to decide how to respond to the statements of an honorable soldier and patriot.

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