Category Archives: national news

national news

Friendships suffer grievous collateral damage

Leave a comment

Quiz time, kids: What part of our political existence has suffered the most grievous example of collateral damage from the current political climate?

Time’s up. I’ll offer my own belief. The greatest casualty happens to be, in my view, the political friendships that at one time survived whatever political differences existing between politicians.

The wounds being inflicted these days almost appear to be mortal in nature. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump calls Kamala Harris “not very smart.” He questions her ethnicity. The convicted felon accuses the current president, Joe Biden, of being the most corrupt politician in history.

For her part, Harris will not let anyone forget about the disgraceful conduct Trump endorsed during his term as POTUS.

There once was a time in this country when losing presidential candidates would lick their wounds, concede to the winner and then pledge to work with the winner to solve the nation’s problems. Trump brought us a whole new element into how not to lose an election. He never conceded he lost to Joe Biden in 2020 and then commenced to sic the mob onto Congress to stop the certification of the 2020 electoral result.

I will presume that Harris wins this election. Can you imagine Trump doing anything different from what he did in 2020? Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, even had the good taste and grace to offer to work with Trump as he sought to build his administration. So did Mitt Romney and John McCain, who lost to Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008, respectively.

These days political foes have become mortal enemies.

I much prefer the time when foes would batter each other with hammer and tong … and then shake hands when it ended. It’s the democratic way.

 

national news, political news

Harris seeks to continue ‘normal behavior’

1 Comment

Joe Biden promised us in 2020 when he decided to run for president a return to what we all think of as “normal behavior” in our head of state.

The former vice ;president was appalled at the Charlottesville, Va., riot launched by Klansmen and Nazis and declared he would campaign for the “soul of our country.”

By and large the president has succeeded in restoring normal behavior and in recapturing our national soul.

He now wants to hand those tasks off to Vice President Kamala Harris, the current Democratic presidential nominee.

I, too, share in the desire for Harris to continue to trek toward normal behavior and I want her also to keep the scrub brush handy as she fights to restore a national soul damaged so egregiously by Donald Trump’s hot pursuit of an authoritarian presidency.

When you watch and listen to Harris and Trump side by side, it becomes — to my ear — literally impossible to believe that Trump’s inarticulateness ever can lead to anything good. Donald Trump does not have an original thought in that brainless skull of his.

I have to mention, too, that Trump cannot string enough sentences together to deliver any sort of cogent thought. Kamala Harris is fully capable of weaving thoughts into the fabric of sensible policy. That ability by itself sets her apart from the incompetent foe she faces as this campaign winds down to its finish.

national news, political news

Harris ‘most qualified’ ever?

Leave a comment

Michelle Obama could be excused for getting caught up in the cheering moment as she delivered her speech recently at the Democratic National Convention.

She called DNC nominee Kamala Harris the “most qualified” person ever to seek the presidency. The former first lady basked in the cheering endorsement of the 20,000 or so attendees … and she surely has earned the nation’s admiration as an accomplished first lady and ambassador on behalf of children everywhere.

But … is the 2024 Democratic nominee the “most qualified” presidential candidate? I’ll stick to my own guns and declare that my candidate for most qualified is a Republican, former President George H.W. Bush.

I now will tick off GHW Bush’s pre-presidential experience:

  • US Navy aviator serving in World War II; he was shot down in the Pacific Theater of Operations.
  • Business owner immediately after being discharged from the Navy.
  • Two terms as a congressman representing Houston from 1967 until 1970.
  • CIA director.
  • United Nations Ambassador.
  • Special envoy to the People’s Republic of China.
  • Vice president for two terms during the Reagan administration.

Pretty impressive background, don’t you think?

All that moxey he earned prior to being elected president in 1988 didn’t result in his re-election in 1992. Indeed, I do happen to notice one significant shortcoming in President Bush’s background: no government executive experience, although I could understand an argument that serving as CIA director required plenty of executive management know-how.

Fast-forward to the present day. Vice President Harris does bring plenty of her own skill to the office she is seeking. Prosecuting attorney, San Francisco County district attorney, California attorney general, U.S. senator and vice president.

I also believe her experience will serve her well if she — and we — are able to benefit from her election in November as the next president of the United States.

national news, political news

Walz flubs simple test

4 Comments

CNN anchor Dana Bash posed a simple yes-or-no question to Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz.

It went like this: You said you carried a weapon in war, but then we learned you did not. Did you misspeak?

Walz didn’t answer the question. Instead, he walked us through his 24-year career in the Army National Guard, expressed his pride in his service and said we shouldn’t denigrate any service person’s military record.

Bash asked him a second time: Did you misspeak?

And again, Walz didn’t answer the question, saying something about how voters “know about my record.”

Republicans have made a bit of noise about the Minnesota governor embellishing his service record. For me, it’s not a huge deal. I accept that he is proud of his service to the country and that he retired as a senior non-commissioned officer; that, too, has been a talking point the GOP has sought to use against Walz.

Bash’s interview with Walz and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was enlightening, to be sure. My own thought is that they both handled themselves coolly and with poise.

I just wish Gov. Walz would have spoken directly to the direct question that Dana Bash posed. I guess I can answer it for him.

Yeah … he misspoke!

national news

Some matters escape me

1 Comment

Try as I do to stay ahead of the public policy curve, it continues to boggle my occasionally thick-skulled noggin just how Donald Trump continues to manipulate the MAGA cult that follows him off the cliff and into the sewer.

I told a dear friend today that Trump’s duplicity and hypocrisy seems to go over the vacuous heads of the MAGAites who think the guy is the best thing in politics since pockets on shirts.

Consider two elements in this moron’s narrative. Fake news and “rigged elections.”

He routinely blasts the media for putting “fake news” into print and on the air. And yet … this the very dimwit who fomented the former Big Lie about Barack Obama’s place of birth. He rode that pony until he realized, I reckon, that it was no longer useful to him. He accused Obama of being from Kenya and, thus, was constitutionally ineligible to run for president.

I shook my head in disbelief … not so much that he kept saying it but at the cult’s willingness to buy into it. They weren’t smart enough to call the dipsh** out on his lie.

Now for the rigged election. He said the 2020 result that elected Joe Biden over Trump was “rigged.” He said it was corrupt. He sicced the mob on the Capitol on Jan. 6 to stop the peaceful transfer of power to the Biden administration.

And yet … here he is four years later plotting to rig this very election through the use of 2020 election deniers holding key state and local election offices.

What’s more, he still won’t commit categorically to accepting the 2024 election results even if Kamala Harris defeats him soundly.

Politicians generally are thought to shade the truth on occasion, I get it. This guy? I cannot believe a single, solitary sentence that pours out of his overfed pie hole as the truth.

Trump is the embodiment of fake news and rigged elections. We must not forget that when we troop to our polling stations later this year.

media news, national news

Harris, Walz seek to clear the air

4 Comments

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic Party presidential ticket, have been criticized unfairly because they haven’t been interviewed extensively by the national media.

Oh, my ….

Republicans have seized on this as a campaign talking point, suggesting that Harris and Walz are too afraid to field “tough questions” from the media on their various policy positions.

They will be put to the test Thursday when they sit with CNN anchor Dana Bash.

This is a bit of a gamble for Harris and Walz. Why? Because Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, their GOP foes, are going to allege — and you can take this to the bank — that they were given softball questions. Trump plays that joker card all the time. Vance, the loyal VP nominee, no doubt will buy into that specious notion.

I continue to hold Harris and Walz in the highest esteem. They have energized their Democratic Party. Harris’s sudden and dramatic emergence as the frontrunner after President Biden ended his candidacy has been a sight to behold.

If I were to place a wager on why the delay, I would suggest that Harris and Walz needed some time to hone their policy positions before facing the national media. Harris only has been running for president for a few weeks and Walz, well, came out of virtual nowhere to emerge as her VP running mate.

Will Bash challenge Harris and Walz if they lie to us? You can bet your oldest child that she will.

I long have thought of Dana Bash as a journalism pro. She is there to seek the truth. Whether the candidates deliver the whole truth likely will be determined by the bias of those Americans who will watch … and listen.

national news

It’s the brevity … stupid!

Just suppose for a moment or two what the public reaction to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign would be had she been in the hunt for, oh, the past year and a half.

Do you think we’d still be as excited about the energy the vice president has brought to the race? Would she wear us out with her exuberance, her enthusiasm, her energy?

I want to offer a notion that might not go over well among some readers of this blog. It is that Harris’s late entry into the campaign after President Biden pulled out of the race has filled the air with excitement that might not have the staying power that many of the VP’s allies say it would.

Vice President Harris launched her campaign from a dead stop with fewer than 100 days to go before Election Day. Joe Biden’s horrible debate performance got tongues wagging about his mental acuity. He stood firm, said he would stay in, then, in an instant he was gone.

Harris stepped up with the wind blowing hard at her back.

Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are in a dead sprint toward the finish line, which is just 70 days from now. My strong hope is that Harris and Walz win, that they vanquish Donald Trump and JD Vance to history’s dust bin and then deliver on the myriad promises they are making.

A part of me, though, just might always wonder if the brevity of this campaign could have been the decisive factor in her victory.

Whatever. A win is a win.

national news

RFK Jr. betrays his family

1 Comment

Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. should be damn glad his father cannot emerge from the ground at Arlington National Cemetery and give his son the whoopin’ he has earned.

Kennedy decided to suspend his presidential campaign and then did the unthinkable: He endorsed the Republican Party’s twice-impeached, four-times-indicted, convicted felon nominee for president of the United States … Donald Trump.

Junior, the scion of the nation’s premier family of partisan Democrats, turned his back on the principles championed by his forebears, namely his father, Robert F. Kennedy, his uncles JFK and Sen. Edward Kennedy and a host of aunts, siblings and cousins.

I am scratching my noggin over this endorsement. So help me, it makes zero sense.

RFK Jr. long has fancied himself as a man of action. He developed a nice environmental law practice and has been at the forefront of environmental causes almost since his graduation from law school. Trump doesn’t give a rat’s rear end about the environment.

And yet RFK Jr. is now backing the disgraced former POTUS.

What does RFK Jr.’s endorsement mean in terms of the election outcome? Probably not enough to matter. I won’t waste any time seeking to evaluate that particular consequence.

I only can imagine what Junior’s sainted mother, Ethel, must be thinking as she watches her son spit in the face of her beloved husband and throw his support behind a moron who stands before the nation and the world as the Republicans’ only nominee ever convicted of multiple felonies.

I may never catch my breath over this one!

national news

Run from behind!

Michelle and Barack Obama laid it out in plain language last night; indeed Kamala Harris has been saying it since the moment she emerged as the Democrats’ frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election.

Do not believe for a second that Donald Trump, their Republican foe, is going away quietly as this campaign revs up.

Yes, Democrats are feeling high and mighty right now as the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket takes shape and prepares its fight plan for the White House. And, yes, Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have floundered, flailed and flubbed their way along since Joe Biden dropped out of the contest.

Let us all remember 2016. Every politician and pundit on Planet Earth “knew” that Hillary Clinton was going to win that election. Then, suddenly, she didn’t.

This sudden and invigorating reversal of fortune does feel different. It does feel unique, as if it’s something none of us has ever experienced. If it is the real thing, then Harris, Walz and their enthusiastic army of supporters need to just remember how we thought we would welcome President Hillary Clinton to power in January 2017.

Yes, last night was inspiring in the extreme. Just a word of caution: Do not count Donald Trump out until after every ballot is counted!

national news, political news

Yep. the man is unfit

8 Comments

Dawn  finally is breaking over the pundit class that is covering the third presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.

Ever since he announced his bid for the presidency the first time in 2015, some of us have been saying that Trump’s zero experience with public service would render him unfit for the presidency. Now, others are seeing the proverbial light.

Consider what the numbskull said about those who receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and how it compares to the Medal of Honor. He put them on an equal footing, suggesting further that the Medal of Freedom is “more important” because Medal of Honor recipients “always are wounded” and some have died to earn the recognition.

What an absolute crock of bull dookie!

The Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor; it goes to those who contribute greatly to our cultural life, through athletics, art, music, drama. The Medal of Honor is our nation’s top military honor; it is awarded to those who perform heroically on the battlefield.

Both medals are big deals.

However, for the former POTUS to put down Medal of Honor recipients because they are “wounded or killed” betrays a profound lack of understanding or appreciation of those don the nation’s uniform in service to their country.

It also reveals what I have noted many times on this blog, which is that Trump never has committed a single moment of his existence on this Earth to public service.

I am running out of ways to say this … but this moron is unfit for public office at any level, let alone as commander in chief.