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A word about Sabol

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Readers of this blog have been patient and receptive to my tales about Toby the Puppy, the pooch who was a key family member for nine years.

I lost him to cancer on Dec. 1, 2023, an event that continues to fill me with sadness.

However, upon returning from vacation September, I had the good fortune to meet another Chihuahua mix puppy named Sabol. We fell in love with each other immediately. She joined the family and — as God is my witness — she has exhibited many of the traits that endeared me to Toby.

Sabol is smart. She is so very affectionate. She is a road warrior in the pickup. When it’s bedtime, she responds to the words “It’s bedtime” by running straight to her bed. 

Whereas Toby never got overweight, Sabol joined us with a pudgy midriff. I have put her on a strict meal regimen: A half-cup of kibble and half a Milk Bone in the morning; another half-cup of food and the other Milk Bone half in the afternoon. The result of her eating plan is quite encouraging: she has lost four pounds since September. Sabol has a way to go but she is making exceptional progress. What’s more she has developed a lively spring in her step.

That’s the latest about my new pooch. I will close with this declaration: I must be the luckiest puppy parent imaginable, having hit home runs with two puppies in a row.

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Speaker excels in lame excuses

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Stand tall, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, for you have just coined the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard into why a former member of your governing body shouldn’t have to be held to account for allegations of severe misconduct.

Former Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the next attorney general. He quit the House and, thus, delivered Johnson the ammo he fired off to earn the title of King of Lame Excuses.

Republicans and Democrats alike believe the House ethics committee needs to release findings of an investigation into whether Gaetz had sex with an underage girl and used illegal drugs.

Johnson said the panel should keep it secret because — drum roll — Gaetz “is no longer a member of the House.”

So, there you have it. A nimrod whom the incoming president wants to become the nation’s next chief law enforcement official should skate simply because he’s no longer in Congress?

The public has a compelling need to know whether someone who could become AG is a child molester and/or someone who engages in rampant drug abuse.

Maybe I am getting too worked up over what well might not occur, as I hear a growing number of Gaetz’s fellow Republicans in Congress believe he is unfit for the office he seeks.

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‘Little Marco’ gets nod at State

As the world watches Donald Trump build a presidential administration, it is good to wonder: Who among these senior officials is going to have a lick of influence on the guy who selected them?

I ask as reports today tell us that Sen. “Little Marco” Rubio will get the nod as secretary of state. Rubio once was a ferocious critic of the next president. He ran against him for the 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination. He drew plenty of fire from Trump, who labeled him “Little Marco” in a successful effort to knock him down to size.

Marco Rubio also used to be a fierce hawk against Russia, against North Korea, China and once called for comprehensive immigration reform.

Hmm. Where is this going? Trump wants to make nice with Russia, likely seeks to resume the romantic correspondence with Kim Jong Un and will have nothing to do with reforming our national immigration policy.

The question of the moment is this: How will Little Marco be able to influence the POTUS on anything? Which one of these Rubio incarnations will show up for work, will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation hearing? For that matter, how will any of the individuals Trump has chosen affect decisions that are coming down the road?

I will say this about Rubio. He is qualified to be secretary of state. He served for many years in the Senate and has shown a level of expertise on foreign policy that the new administration will need.

The question, though, remains the same. Will any of that experience and moxey matter when the new president faces critical mass at decision time?

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Moral standards have vanished

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I will go to my grave flummoxed, flabbergasted and frustrated totally over the lack of moral standards we now require of candidates for president of the United States.

We have elected an individual who has admitted to serial philandering, admitted to grabbing women by their private area, been convicted of 34 felony counts associated with his campaign, been convicted of raping a journalist and convicted of paying an adult film actress $130,000 to keep quiet about a one-night stand that the president says never occurred.

That just scratches the top of my itchy head.

It’s OK for a candidate for the highest office in land to do those things, if you believe the horsesh** pushed by Donald Trump’s loyal cult followers.

What is going to happen when a politician from the Democratic Party side of the aisle gets caught committing any one of those things enumerated here? The MAGA crowd will go ballistic. So will the Oval Office occupant. They will engage in selective outrage because their guy got away with it.

It is disgraceful, disgusting and duplicitous conduct at its worst.

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Puppy loves the rain!

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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.

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Heading down the stretch

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The rhetoric I am hearing these days tells me that the 2024 presidential election just might end in the manner I and millions of other Americans hope will occur.

There’s chatter about polling errors that could be revealed that place Vice President Kamala Harris in the driver’s seat en route to the Oval Office. Puerto Ricans are expressing rage over the comments about the island being populated by “garbage.” Donald Trump then clambered aboard a trash truck to, um, demonstrate something; it reminded me and others of the1988 campaign moment when Michael Dukakis boarded the tank and produced the Mother of Fatal Photo Ops.

Trump is flailing. Harris is sailing.

Will this be a runaway? Probably not. Pollsters are continuing to prepare us for a photo finish. I am continuing to have my doubts that the race will be as close as the pundits are telling us. I won’t predict a runaway, given my terrible record as a political predictor.

However, it is beginning to a bit better for the good guys.

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So long, political tradition

Political tradition has been tossed angrily into the crapper and, yes, this is a “both sides do it” argument.

I am going to discuss briefly one of those tradition. It’s the one in which the loser of the race places the call to the winner to concede and to pledge support for the new president’s massive undertaking.

Ten days from Election Day and we have heard some of the nastiest campaign stump rhetoric I’ve ever heard.

Who’s to blame for discarding this tradition? Why, it’s Donald John Trump, of course!

He called the 2020 election rigged. He didn’t attend President Biden’s inaugural. He has been steamed ever since at losing the Electoral College and the popular vote by 7 million ballots.

The stump-speech volume in 2024 has been even more harsh. Kamala Harris accuses Trump of being a fascist, echoing opinions expressed by many of Trump’s key military and national security advisers.

For his part, Trump calls Harris a dim bulb, “a nasty person,” and “the worst vice president in history.”

Obviously, one of these people is going to win. Will the loser be able to suck it up long enough to call the winner and resume the traditional concession call?

If Harris is the winner, don’t think for a moment that Trump will concede anything. If hell freezes over and Trump wins, I wouldn’t bet on Harris making the call, either.

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Trump channels Hitler

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There should be zero doubt at this stage of the 2024 presidential campaign that Donald Trump envisions himself as a new version of Adolf Hitler.

A widely attributed quote says that Trump hopes he can get “generals like the ones Hitler had.”

I’ll just say it out loud. Donald Trump is insane. He is beyond merely being ignorant, even though he doesn’t seem to know that Hitler’s generals tried three times to assassinate the 20th century’s most despicable tyrant. Trump only sees the blind, frothing loyalty that many of them exhibited toward Hitler.

The former Joint Chiefs chairman, Army Gen. Mark Milley, says Trump is “fascist to the core.” Former Homeland Security secretary/ former White House chief of staff/former Marine Gen. John Kelly says Trump is unfit for public office. Former Defense Secretary/former Marine Gen. Jim Mattis has called Trump a “moron.”

This man wants his old job back, the one from which 81 million Americans fired him four years ago.

You didn’t hear it here first, but I will say it again: If he gets back into office, ladies and gents, you and I are in a world of hurt.

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‘Fair, balanced?’ Bwahaha!

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Do you remember the time the Fox Propaganda Network touted itself as an organization that presented the news in a “fair and balanced” manner?

Well, kids …  it’s never been true. We saw stark evidence of that lie during Kamala Harris’s interview with Fox’s Bret Baier the other evening.

Baier asked the Democratic presidential nominee to commend on remarks she had made accusing Donald Trump of threatening to use the military to exact retribution against his political adversaries. Then he broadcast a heavily edited version of Trump’s response to a question leveled at him by Fox colleague Harris Faulkner.

He told Faulkner he was the most “investigated” public figure since “Alphonse Capone.” That was the sum of his re-broadcast response.

Harris didn’t take the bait. She called Baier out on the spot, telling him that he had edited the remarks to cast Trump in a favorable light. The vice president demonstrated the kind of snap that media reps should be doing when Trump’s remarks are edited in that shameless manner.

As for Fox’s reputation as being “fair and balanced,” that’s never been the case, and the network is now nothing more than a shill for the moronic MAGA cult that has taken over a once-great political party.

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Sucking it up with an early vote

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Command decision time at blogging HQ, which happens to be my North Texas man cave.

I have decided to cast my vote early in this year’s election, Early voting begins in Texas on Monday and it is possible I’ll be one of the first voters in line at my Princeton polling place.

As many of you know, I have preferred to wait until Election Day to cast my ballot. Not this year. I am going to get my preferences logged into the secure system early. I am going to get my civic duty out of the way.

Then I’ll just wait for the end of the campaign to exhaust itself until Nov. 5.

My concerns about candidates’ messing up between now and Election Day remain. I am just going to presume that the candidates of my choice will keep it clean until Election Day.

I also am announcing my plan to split my ticket. I am going to vote for some Republicans running in down-ballot contests. You know all about my preferences for the very top of the ballot. I won’t revisit those choices here or seek to explain them to you.

There is no point to trying to persuade readers of this blog about the unfitness of the Republican presidential nominee or try to explain how an incumbent US senator can hightail it to Cancun while hundreds of Texans were dying in the midst of the February 2021 deep freeze that smothered virtually the entire state.

Just know that I remain faithful to opposing straight-ticket voting. That principle remains intact.

Let it never be said that this old man is too hidebound to change the way he casts his ballot. I might not vote early in the next election, or the one after that.

This one? I hear the sound of my conscience telling me to do it.