Category Archives: national news

national news

One year down (almost), three more to go

Listen up, boys and girls, I have some good news to remind you about some news that might cause you some queasiness … as it does for me and I’ve just now thought about it.

The good news is that we’re closing in on the first year of Donald Trump’s second term as POTUS. He took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025, which means on that date next year — which is just around the corner! — he will have completed the first year of his Retribution Tour.

Now for the rest of it. Dude’s got three more years to wreak havoc on our democratic republic.

I shall qualify the bad news with a few glimmers of hope that we might be able to stem the damage this blowhard can inflict.

The midterm election is coming up next fall. A year from next week! It’ll be here in a flash. We have to prepare for a back-alley brawl with the MAGA cultists. It is winnable. The House of Reps is close to flipping to Democratic control. If the nation can elect a handful of Democrats, we can welcome Hakeen Jeffries as our next speaker. The Senate is a tougher climb, but there appears to be a GOP senator or two who might be vulnerable to defeat. I am not going to toss John Cornyn under that electoral bus … at least not yet.

Trump keeps yammering that he’s in the strongest public approval rating in history. Yeah, he actually has said it. He’s lying. His approval rating at this moment stands at around 41%. President George W. Bush’s rating peaked at around 90% right after 9/11. President Bush the Elder’s rating topped out at 91% when he declared that Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 “will not stand.” President Reagan won a 49-state re-election landslide victory in 1984, garnering 59% of the popular vote. President Nixon also won a 49-state re-election bid in 1972, and with a 62% popular vote.

Finally, Donald Trump said this week that he cannot seek a third term as president. The Constitution’s 22nd Amendment won’t allow it, he acknowledged. So, there … even the insurrectionist in chief has realized that amending the Constitution to allow him to run for a third term is out of the question.

What does all this mean for democracy’s future? It means that Trump is the lamest of ducks and that if he continues to blunder and bumble his way through the rest of his term that there well might be a candidate who can restore regular order to the way we govern this great country.

national news

What if it were your house … ?

Let’s play a little game of “what if” … if you don’t mind. I’ll be brief, but the point I want to make is pretty damn big.

What if you rented your home to a tenant who promised to take good care of your property? He wouldn’t touch it. He would make no alerations to it and would return it to you in precisely the condition he found it when he took the keys to the place.

Then, suddenly — and with virtually zero advance warning — bulldozers and backhoes show up and start knocking down an adjoining structure. What if your tenant told you he wanted to build a room to make fishing flies. But … wait! That’s not the deal we entered into when I rented the place to you, is your response. That’s tough, he said … live with it.

So here we are. The man who is living as renter in the people’s house, the White House, has decided to knock down the historic East Wing. He wants to build an opulent ballroom. He wants to use that ballroom to entertain heads of state. He deems the State Dining Room, where presidents have welcomed visiting kings, queens, potentates and assorted leaders of various nations for many decades.

Donald Trump is making a mockery of the house that you and I own. Where I come from, I call it “de-facing public property.” Yes, I get that he’s a U.S. citizen, too, so he can claim ownership of the White House where he will live for the next three years. To my way of thinking, that does not give him license to destroy a couple of centuries of history by building a ballroom that likely will look like a sort of Mar-a-Lago on the Potomac.

I’m sure you’ll recall the jokes that went viral when Trump considering a run for the presidency. Some jokesters wondered aloud whether he would erect a huge “TRUMP” sign and hang it on the front of the White House. It got a huge laugh.

Today … it’s not so funny.

national news

Speaker losing shutdown battle?

Mike Johnson — bless his heart — is trying desperately to blame the government shutdown on Democrats who oppose Republican bills to reopen the government.

What the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatves never says while chastising his Democratic friends is the reason for the string of “no” votes. Republican honchos leave out the part about Affordable Care Act subsidies being swept away by these GOP efforts to unlock the doors of the federal government. Getting rid of the ACA only will send insurance premiums far into the deep blue sky. It will deny health insurance to millions of Americans who depend on what is referred to colloquially as Obamacare.

Do you remember when “Obamacare” was tossed around as an epithet? These days, even the former president, Barack Obama, uses the term when referencing the ACA at political rallies. The ACA was the 44th president’s signature piece of domestic legislation, which then-Vice President Joe Biden was heard calling a “big fu**ing deal.” And it is!

The government is shut down and heading for a record stint of governing inaction by the political party that runs both congressional chambers, has one of its own in the White House (which he is destroying with the ballroom construction), and yet these numbskulls can’t find their ass with both hands.

Speaker Johnson is losing the battle and possibly the public relations war over this government shutdown. To be honest, I don’t give a crap about Johnson and the Republicans’ standing in the polls. I do care that the government restarts and gets revved up to help those of who are paying for the services … which we aren’t getting!

national news

East Wing crashing down!

I really have little to offer about Donald Trump’s decision to tear down the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom. I am left mostly to shake my head in utter astonishment that this moron would do such a thing to a cherished piece of our national history.

Trump once promised to leave the White House structure alone were he to make significant change in it. That he broke that promise is no surprise, but it doesn’t lessen the ghastly sight of he wrecking crews knocking down the place where heads of state have met with presidents and where important events have occurred.

I am going to presume that Trump will glitter the ballroom up with the gold trimmings he already has placed in the Oval Office and throughout the West Wing. The guy sickens me to my core.

You know, of course, who is paying for this ballroom. You and I are. The taxpayers. We’re going to pony up about $300 million for a project that received zero public comment prior to the arrival of the wrecking crew. And, yes, even the legality of this work is being questioned.

Trump just makes me want to hurl.

national news

GOP fails to govern

Look for the common denominator … which happens to be one of my favorite pieces of advice I hand out.

If, after looking at all the tempests and tumult and you find something in common that runs through them, then you have a culprit you can separate from the pack of demons.

What, then, is the common denominator in all the government shut downs we have endured over the past five decades or so? One jumps out at me. It’s the Republican congressional leadership. All these shutdowns seem instigated by GOP hotheads intent on making names for themselves. They place notoriety over notable legislative achievement.

The latest government shut down is the on the verge of setting a dubious record for longevity. The GOP blames Democrats because they keep rejecting Republican efforts to pass continuing resolutions that would re-open the government. Democrats counter that the GOP plan includes the notion of ending Affordable Care Act subsidies that uninsured Americans need to continue receiving health insurance.

The stalemate drags on. We have found the common denominator. It mirrors prior such schemes from the same political party that has given us too damn many of these misadventures.

national news

SOBs mislabel ‘No Kings’ rallies

Spoiler alert: Be advised that this brief blog post contains a healthy dose of profane invective aimed at those who defend Donald Trump’s power grab.

The rotten sons of bitches who continue to assert that those of us opposed to Trump’s unconstitutional power grab “hate America” are demonstrating the worst form of demagoguery.

Communities across the nation rallied to protest Trump’s quest for power by staging the “No Kings” rally. They carried signs. They called immigration officials “Trump’s Gestapo.” These rallies were peaceful.

I am unaware of anyone who stated that they “hate America.” And yet that’s he kind of horse shit we heard from House Speaker Mike Johnson and a host of other right-wing dipshits who are intent on demonizing those who merely are dissenting from government policy decisions.

These assholes don’t grasp that the nation was founded on dissent. That dissent is an essential part of how we hold our elected officials accountable. I suspect we’ll see many more of these rallies for the remainder of Trump’s time in office. And we’ll hear plenty of epithets that tell lies about those who participate in them.

The rotten bastards.

 

media news, national news, political news, Uncategorized

MAGA’S message works

Every so often I get a criticism on this blog that rings true, that the critic makes a good point.

I am going to acknowledge one of those critics right now.

He challenged a blog post that suggested that voters can reject the MAGA movement simply by voting the MAGA dipshits out of office. My critic pointed out that parthy shift from Democrat to Republican is the most significant he has seen in his lifetime. I can’t challenge that, so I’ll accept it.

But I believe the underlying message of his critique is correct. The MAGA movement has perfect its messaging, its content and its delivery of it to Americans. The anti-MAGA gang is floundering. They cannot seem to speak with a limited number of voices, let alone with a single voice.

Think about this. I’ve used the term “MAGA” as an actual word. It’s in reality an acronym for Make America Great Again. Right there is a victory for the MAGA movement. It has established its identity to such a level that the acronym now doubles as a word, kinda like SCUBA diver and TEA party.

I disagree that we need to “make Ameria great again.” We have been a great country for my entire life. Even longer than that. We continue to lead the world in research and development, in Nobel laureates, we are the strongest military machine in human history. We remain the sole indispensable nation on Earth. The MAGA cult has persuaded enough of us to believe that none of that is true.

How did they do it? I believe it is from MAGA’s lack of ambiguity. It has a clear message and it delivers it with passion and the belief that they are right and the rest of us have grown a second head or a third eye.

The anti-MAGA crowd must develop its own message technique in a hurry. The result will be catastrophic for our nation as the MAGA goons continue to make mincemeat of the rest of the world’s greatest nation.

 

national news

No on ‘War’ Department

Vice President J.D. Vance has joined Donald Trump’s name-change cabal by declaring the Defense Department as the “War” Department.

This American patriot, who once got a glimpse of war back when I suited up for duty in the Army, will not join the MAGA cultists in making such a reference. I will continue to call it what it is and what it should remain, the Department of Defense, with a mission to “defend” the nation against foreign enemies.

I just don’t understand what enters Trump’s vacuous noggin. Think for just a moment about this.

When he was eligible to serve in the military when we were fighting a war, he chickened out. He claimed bone spurs. Has anyone ever seen him walking the aid of a cane? A doctor said he had them, so he backed out of serving the nation he said he loves.

Since becoming a politician, he has denigrated those who have served. He once said he didn’t want to be photographed with service personnel wounded in battle. He has insulted the likes of the late Sen. John McCain, a former Vietnam War prisoner whom Trump once said he didn’t deserve to be called a hero. He said he likes only those who “aren’t captured.” The bastard …

Now he wants to rename the Defense Department the War Department because it sounds tough. It has a sort of manly ring to it. This blog never will refer to the Defense Department in that new context, any more than it will attach the word “President” directly in front of Donald Trump’s name.

A department of “war” is overtly provocative and should be tossed aside as a reminder of the smallness of the individuals who support this cockamamie notion.

national news

Trump steals ridicule from jaws of praise

Donald J. Trump did the virtually impossible this week when faced with a seeming foreign policy success he managed to restore the ridiculousness of his vengeance campaign.

Trump has appeared to have helped broker a peace deal between Hamas and Israel, ending a two-year war that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians. What does he do, just as word gets out about the ceasefire in Gaza? The Justice Department indicts New York Attorney General Letitia James on a seeminly specious charge of real estate fraud.

The POTUS then shifted the talk away from a landmark peace deal in the Middle East to yet another example of the ghastly retribution he is seeking against political opponents. James is a foe of Trump. Her office obtained a conviction on 34 felony counts a year ago against Trump, making him the first felon ever elected president of the United States.

Trump directed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to secure an indictment against James, just as he did when a grand jury indicted former FBI Director Jim Comey on a phony charge of perjury before a Senate committee.

Thursday should have been Donald Trump’s day of triumph. I am one American who is delighted at the prospect that peace might finally be on tap for the Gaza Strip. Hamas threw the region into a bloody cauldron when on Oct. 7, 2023 it launched a hideous missile attack against Israeli civilians, killing more than 1,000 victims. Israel’s response was to invade Gaza with armor, artillery, infantry and air power. The result has been carnage not seen since, oh, the Vietnam War.

Trump’s team was able to persuade Israel and Hamas to stop the killing. There appears to be a deal in the works to make this deal possible. Trump stepped on his own applause lines by indicting the New York AG who was doing her job as a prosecutor.

The guy has multiple loose screws rattling around in his over-coiffed noggin.

national news

Hold congressional pay, too!

My rage against Congress is building, and we’re only in the second day of the government shutdown.

Congress inability to find a funding solution that keeps government operating fully has forced thousands of public servants to work out without. I’m talking about air traffic controllers and and airport security personnel. Here’s the punchline: Congress is continuing to receive its six-figure salary in full.

That is outrateous! I hereby call on Congress to do the impossible, which is to withhold the pay it gives to its members, make them suffer the same indignity they are forcing on public service employees.

The 27the Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does withhold congressional pay raises from taking effect until the next congressional election. That’s a start toward holding members of Congress accountable for the decisions they make. Or fail to make.

The idea that our congressional representatives are drawing their full salary while forcing others to go without theirs makes my blood boil … and therefore, I wish a plague on both sides of the political chasm.