Trump countdown is on

Some of us out here have commenced the countdown clock to determine when Donald J. Trump is going to commit a profoundly foolish, stupid and potentially illegal act when he assumes the presidency on Jan. 20.

I am not making any bets. I don’t know when it will occur. I do have some notions, though, about what Trump might seek to do when he takes his hand off the holy book on inauguration day.

He could:

  • Pardon the traitors who were jailed for their attack on the government on Jan. 6, 2021.
  • Issue an executive order establishing a sky-high tariff on imported goods, which could trigger an inflation rate we haven’t seen in many decades.
  • Call Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and promise to end any support for Ukraine, which would clear the deck for Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
  • Issue another executive order calling for the mass deportation of 11 million U.S. residents who are here illegally.
  • Call flag officers back to active duty and then order them court-martialed for comments they made about Trump being a fascist. I am researching that idiotic notion to see if it’s legal. I’ll get back to you on that one.

Will he do any of them? Beats the daylights out of me. I’m just speculating, because that’s all I can do sitting here at some distance.

None of this, of course, includes any of the idiotic pronouncements he could make. I am wondering what could be the memorable from his second inaugural speech. The first one gave us “the American carnage ends” immediately. It didn’t.

The second Trump term well could be as chaotic as the first one.

Let’s all hold on with both hands.

Joe Biden: institutionalist

Joe Biden’s love of tradition and his inherent grace were on full display today as he welcomed his successor to the job he is about to inherit.

President Biden, to put it bluntly, has demonstrated tangibly that he is a far better man than Donald J. Trump ever thought of being.

Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris continues to send tremors throughout the world as leaders seek to assess what all this means for U.S. standing in the world community.

I also need to remind anyone who needs reminding that Joe Biden today offered the very thing that his predecessor, Trump, denied him when Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election: a peaceful transfer of power.

Biden values the tradition associated with the presidency. He vowed today to provide a complete and peaceful transfer of power to the Trump team. I shake my head in amazement that President Biden would be so inclined. But that’s why he was elected POTUS in the first place. Biden represents the very best among us. Trump embodies, well, far less of American culture.

I don’t expect Donald Trump to reflect for a nano-second on what President Biden has pledged. He isn’t wired to reflect on anything other than how he can benefit. Still, I just want Joe Biden to know that his magnanimity has not gone unnoticed.

Well done, Mr. President.

Americans deliver more darkness

OK, I don’t have much to say about what happened last night across this great land … so I’ll just declare that most of the Americans who voted for president decided to send us into a period of darkness and despair.

Donald Trump’s election as president is being greeted with high-fives and back-slapping. It’s also being met with tears and worry about what this man’s return to the world stage means for this nation.

This much also is certain as I continue to ponder what might lie ahead for us, which is that Trump once again has turned your friendly blogger into a blithering idiot. Just when I thought Vice President Kamala Harris has revived her campaign down the stretch for a sprint to victory lane, she fell short.

Why on this good Earth we have chosen to elect a degenerate, a pervert, a convicted felon, an admitted philanderer and self-acknowledged sexual assailant to our grandest political office is utterly beyond my ability to understand. He denigrates our servicemen and women, and he expresses admiration for some of the world’s most ruthless dictators

We used to demand that we elect the best among us to public office. Americans have selected one of the worst among us as our president. What in this topsy-turvy world has happened to us?

I am still in utter shock.

Puppy loves the rain!

Allow me to be crystal clear: I love my new puppy, Sabol, beyond all that is reasonable.

However — and this is not a deal breaker — Sabol, it turns out, loves the rain. She loves it so much that when it pours, I can hardly get her to come into the house.

The sky opened up today in Princeton. It poured off and on for most of the day. What did Sabol do? She wanted to go outside into the deluge!

Understand this: Toby the Puppy hated water. He hated rainfall. He hated lawn sprinklers. The only time Toby tolerated rain occurred when he was taking a bath.

These days, I am left to struggle to keep my new puppy inside where it’s dry … and where she won’t stink to high heaven when her fur dries.

Doggie parenthood does have its challenges.

Nation will survive

Allow me this opportunity to speak well of the system of government that our nation’s founders created more than two centuries ago.

Friends of mine have said — and they are only half-joking — that they are going to leave the US of A in case the wrong candidate wins the next presidential election. Me? I am staying put. Why? Because my faith in the Constitution will remain strong.

I voted early for Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. I declared my preference for this contest a long time ago. I am a “never Trumper.” I never would cast my ballot for this totally unfit human being. I said so even before he rode the escalator in June 2015 to declare his intention to run for president in 2016.

Despite all the threats this guy has made, the Constitution has built in safeguards that those of us who oppose this individual can deploy. It does provide for impeachment. The courts — even with the right-wingers sitting on the bench — also can be summoned to make key decisions that could block what this madman would want to do.

I am hoping for a Harris-Walz victory. I make no bones about who I want to take the oath of office next January. However, I happen to love living in the greatest nation on Earth. I intend to stay here … for the duration of the time God gives me to breathe freely.

I have sought to use this blog as a weapon to defeat Donald Trump. The Constitution gives me the protection I need to continue using in case the worst event comes to pass.

However, I remain increasingly hopeful that the correct candidate will take her oath next January.

Waiting with bated breath

Never in my entire — and admittedly lengthy — life can I remember waiting with such anticipation for the polls to close back east on Election Night.

That’s what I am doing today. It is mid-afternoon in North Texas. The polls close in New England and along the Atlantic Coast in about five hours. Once they do, we well might get an idea of whether the nation is returning to its old self of optimism and liberty … or whether we’re going to succumb to the dipshit notions pitched by a convicted felon, twice-impeached former POTUS.

You know what I want to happen. My gut and, yes, my trick knee are telling we might be going to sleep tonight with a hopeful smile. But it ain’t a lead-pipe cinch.

I heard enough of the campaign rhetoric. I have heard the sales pitches of both sides. I am now awaiting the results of what all those millions of campaign dollars have purchased for the candidates who spent them.

Harris has the ‘big mo’

Momentum well might be the great predictor of who finishes first in the 2024 presidential race.

From my North Texas vantage point, in a county that borders Democratic Party hotbed in Dallas County, it looks for all the world as if Vice President Kamala Harris has the “big mo” as she and Donald Trump gallop down the stretch.

Harris has declared she is going “all positive” in the final hours of this most bitter campaign. Trump’s strategy? He’s going in the other direction. Harris talks about her momentum. Trump refers to Democrats as members of a “demonic party.” Harris speaks of “joy in the morning.” Trump says an assailant would have to take out the “fake news” staffers to get to him, which he said “wouldn’t bother me.”

Who is sounding like a winner? Who’s the loser?

I dare not say out loud what I am hoping in my heart.

Early vote smashes records!

ABC News reported this morning that 47% of all Texas registered voters cast their ballots early in advance of Election Day.

Think for just a moment about that. Nearly half of all the state’s registered voters have spoken out. Does this mean that the early-vote strategy is going to produce a record overall turnout when all the ballots are counted?

Nationally, the early-vote turnout exceeds 78 million votes. That is slightly more than half of all the ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election.

This well could bode for a serious uptick in overall voter participation.

I have long been critical of early voting as a way to draw more people to the polls. Historically, early voting has enabled Americans to cast their ballots without having to wait in long lines on Election Day.  It hasn’t boosted total vote turnout.

This year might be different … to which I offer a huge hooray!

Rarified air in grid polling

Allow me this brief admission, which is that a long-suffering fan of the University of Oregon football program is finding it hard to breathe while the Ducks are perched at the tippy-top of a list of elite programs.

Yes, the Ducks have been good for some time now. They were ranked No. 1 briefly during the 2012 season. Then they ran into the Stanford Cardinal, which knocked the Ducks off their lofty perch.

I didn’t attend the U of O. I attended Portland State University. However, as a red-blooded American patriot who loves college football, I am enjoying the dickens out of watching the Ducks take care of business on the field.

A couple of points need to be made about Oregon’s rise to the top of the heap. One is that the Ducks now compete in the Big Ten, which for us Pacific Coast natives is akin to cheering for the enemy on the battlefield. In the old days, the Pac 12 competed for the right to play in the Rose Bowl, in which the other team was the Big Ten champion.

It’s all a mixed-up jumble now, with the Rose Bowl game tossed into the mix of bowl games designed to determine the national football champion.

The other thing is this “transfer portal” that seems to dominate college athletics. Student-athletes now are able transfer to schools just to compete in football or other top-drawer sports. The Ducks ‘ lineup now features a kid named Dillon Gabriel, who transferred to Oregon from Oklahoma.  Last year, the stud was QB Bo Nix, a transfer from Auburn. This transfer business makes it hard for fans like me to latch onto players who only are there for a season or two. They have zero loyalty to the school.

Marcus Mariota played QB for the Ducks and won the Heisman Trophy as the best college football player in the nation. He entered school as a freshman and stayed until he earned his degree … and then used up his football eligibility.

However, all this is just chatter. The college football know-it-alls think the Ducks are the top college team in the country and have them ranked No. 1. Those of us who remember all those lean years in Eugene will accept this new “elite” status happily … and with pride that the gridiron glory brings to the state of my birth.

Trump can declare a form of victory

Win or lose when they count the presidential election ballots on Tuesday, Donald J. Trump can declare an important victory in one of the side battles waged in this campaign.

I believe the Republican nominee has managed to bully major newspapers into forgoing a presidential endorsement in this most consequential election.

The Washington Post will be quiet on who it prefers to see elected. So will the New York Times. So will Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain. Major metropolitan daily news across the land have made the same decision.

Why is that? I believe that the GOP nominee’s insistence that the media are the “enemy of the people ” has managed to sink in. Publishers and senior editors have sought to explain themselves. No explanation is necessary.

They have been cowed into fearing how readers might react were they to recommend the election of Democrats Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. This election, though, cries out for some media leadership, particularly when we have a major-party presidential nominee who is so demonstrably unfit to serve in the office he seeks.

I take no joy in recognizing what I believe is a tactical victory for Trump. I’ll just have to swallow hard.

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